Sunshine is a comic written by Tony Kittrell with pencils by Catia Fantini and colors by Whitney Cook. A teenager gains strange powers after a lab explosion. This is a dramatic science fiction comic with arguments, teen angst, and violence. The leading lady for this tale is Jhane, she is a high school student who lives with her dad. She regularly butts heads with her dad and gets into fights at school, which doesn’t help the situation. She has a best friend name Brittney whose mom works for Athena Laboratories, which is also where Jhane’s dad works as security. The story begins with Jhane writing in her journal about her day at school where she got into a fight and her dad had to pick her up. She then flashes back to her childhood where things weren’t all sunshine and roses. The violence here is explosive, hard-hitting, and gruesome with blood and gore. The pacing is slow at first but it speeds up to steady for the rest of the issue. The tone is part teen drama part action movie. There are many intense moments due to violence and uncomfortable conversations. The dialogue here is split three ways between Jhane’s thoughts, narration from unclear sources, and spoken words, usually aggressive back-and-forths. There are no word-heavy pages. This is an exciting issue that pairs an interesting young lead with a story that mixes a couple genres.

            The art here is smoothly detailed with significant shading and a style reminiscent of early 2000’s comics. The color range here is vast though there is an overall dark tone. While we do get a glimpse of a park and some trees there isn’t much natural scenery here. The primary location is the Athena Laboratories where the crux of the story takes place but there are a number of other office-like spaces where important things happen. The backgrounds usually show the surrounds but during action sequences they can be gradient colors with optional action-lines. The expression level here is above-average as these characters change looks on a panel-by-panel basis. The emotional range consists of sadness and grief as well as anger and rage with happiness being rare. The faces sport strong features and show the different expressions clearly. The violence here can get very gruesome and is usually physical. There is a large amount of blood and decent bit of gore. The action scenes tend to come in short, multipage bursts and they flow pretty well. The villain Tesla wears a skintight uniform.

“Is this worth reading?”

Yes, if this is up your alley.

“Would I like this?”

If you like science fiction stories with a bunch of drama that star a black girl and her dad with heavy violence and teen angst then this is for you.

“What would this comic’s film rating be?”

R. Violence, blood, gore.

“Could I get a quote from the comic?”

“Well it couldn’t have been too bad, you’re still alive.”

 

Purchase Link: https://www.indyplanet.com/sunshine-one-shot

***IN-DEPTH COMIC STATS BELOW***

Probably Contains Spoilers

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Actual Pages(not counting covers and credits): 28

Violent Pages: 12, for 43% of the comic

Sexy Pages: 0, for 0% of the comic

 

**The levels below aren’t necessarily maintained throughout the whole comic, but they were definitely reached**

 

Violence Level – 4

“Wasn’t no tussling at all.”

“Sometimes you gotta hit somebody.”

“I’m getting charged with how many counts of assault?”

“This was a tournament arc.”

“All my life I had to fight.”

 

Gore Level – 4

“The only thing leaking out your face is tears.”

“Looks like somebody spilled some ketchup.”

“Might need to soak that up with a bath towel.”

“That isn’t supposed to be outside the body.”

“This is a slaughterhouse.”

 

Death Level – 3

“And everybody lived happily ever after.”

“We might have gone to a couple funerals.”

“It just LOOKS like a serial killer was here.”

“Yeah this was a tragedy.”

“Think Gettysburg.”

 

Porn Level – 1

“Everybody kept their clothes on.”

“I guess it was too hot for a bra.”

“Sometimes you got to let everything air out.”

“This is like late night Cinemax in the early 2000’s.”

“Oh. This is porn.”