Ben Stenbeck has been a name in comics that frequently means consistency in quality, clarity in action, and tight pacing. It helps that most of his work up to this point has been in providing pencils for Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden’s Baltimore, plus more than a few different Hellboy stories, which tend to have solid writing at the base level. Stenbeck, however, has finally broken out on his own and his new comic book is the Image Comics series Our Bones Dust, and he’s clearly bringing every trick he learned along the way with him and using it to great effect.
Stenbeck not only draws but writes the new series, working with Dave Stewart on colors. He’s already proven he’s not afraid as a storyteller due to some of his choices here. There are two narratives unfolding in Our Bones Dust, which connect in a surprising way. As the comic begins we’re treated to the barren wasteland that is now the Earth, something that feels appropriate to see after the release of the new . These opening pages are Stenbeck at his best, delivering a fully realized world in just a few panels that tells you so much about this entire narrative in quick fashion. Everything you need to know about this version of the Earth is revealed quickly, from half-melted electrical towers to months-old corpses tied to their steel bases, it’s a tale we’ve seen but which Stenbeck manages to make feel fresh.
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Lonely souls wandering the desert aren’t the first people we meet however, in fact it’s a pair of alien scientists that introduce us to the world of Our Bones Dust. These two very bizarre looking characters seem eager to just observe, even catalogue what life is like on our now fully destroyed and seemingly irradiated planet. With the introduction of these two characters, Attis and Poena, who could not be less human if Stenbeck tried. Not only does the presence of these two immediately add a unique twist to the entire narrative, but it grounds the world of Our Bones Dust in a unique way. Something that has long fascinated readers about post-apocalyptic tales is the world building, and now we get characters whose entire purpose seems to be exploring that for our own benefit.
This is where the other plot comes in. Naturally, a post-apocalyptic tale of this kind would be incomplete without tribes of deeply unpleasant people that have learned to live in this harsh landscape; to add a worthwhile wrinkle though these bands of angry men aren’t the only ones around. There’s a youngster fighting for survival on their own too, and it becomes clear in the story that his youth makes him an anomaly here. As one might expect though, even with the surprises revealed in the first pages of Our Bones Dust, there’s even more as it comes to a close.
Stenbeck’s pencils, like so many of his other comics, have a visual clarity and an extreme sense of detail. While the narrative leaves plenty of room for questions about what lies ahead, there’s no ambiguity about what’s actually happening on the pages themselves. Though the uniqueness that his two alien characters couldn’t be more different from the human characters that inhabit the Earth, their designs are proof of Stenbeck’s range as an illustrator. This is only elevated by the fact that his story is immediately strong and clearly full of additional surprises.
It’s hard to juggle dual narratives in a story, especially when they’re as radically different as the two found here, but Our Bones Dust manages to handle both and make their distinct natures work in tandem. Ben Stenbeck continues his streak of being a reliable artist with a style that matches his stories. After years of working on other people’s comics scripts it’s refreshing to see Stenbeck stretch his creative wings and try something on his own. At the core of Our Bones Dust though is that this series, despite some clear influences from other media, is through and through a comic book story. It can only be told this way and it’s embracing the medium as the best home for its own narrative.
Published by Image Comics
On December 6, 2023
Written by Ben Stenbeck
Art by Ben Stenbeck
Colors by Dave Stewart
Letters by Rus Wooton
Cover by Ben Stenbeck
