The image of New York City is something ingrained in the DNA of comics. DC’s initial office on Broadway, the main hub of activity in the Marvel universe, and countless other creators can all trace their origins to the city. And in that urbanist center, stories swell. The throngs of people, the iconic skyscrapers and streets, the ease of walkability compared to anywhere in Florida, it’s difficult not to romanticize some aspect of New York. Even more so when you’re on street-level with James Tynion IV, Elsa Charretier, Jordie Bellaire, and Aditya Bidikar’s The City Beneath Her Feet.

As she walks through Midtown Manhattan, Zara worries she’s going to have to pay back the advance on her second novel. It’s that or actually sit down to write the book she owes her publisher. So she gets drunk off shitty martinis in a fake Irish pub until she has to stumble her way home. Jasper Jayne has just killed a lot of people, as she’s been contracted to do. But, in the midst of murder, a bullet cuts through her arm and she has to stumble back home. In a subway station, Zara sees the slumped over Jasper Jayne and offers to take her to a hospital, but the latter refuses. When they end up in Jasper Jayne’s home, Zara’s mind begins constructing a story. Over the course of three years, Jasper Jayne will show up in Zara’s home until one day she doesn’t. But she does leave Zara her massive apartment, her fortune, and the contract on her head.

As a first issue, The City Beneath Her Feet goes in a bit of a different direction. We have this set up between Zara and Jasper Jayne and the revelation at the end that this isn’t even the beginning of the story as we see Zara in the future telling us where things will be leading from that point. It’s in media res, but coming from a different angle as our narrator gives us the end of one character’s story as the cliff-hanger to get us to the next issue. But we don’t know yet what that will entail as implication and inference are the lifeblood of a good first issue. There is a mystery here—namely of what happens to Jasper Jayne—but we only have the impression of a mystery that acts as the main narrative hook while Zara is wiping blood from her mouth in a subway station recounting what lead to that point. It’s a hefty hook as we still don’t even know how many dots we’ll need to connect the story together.

In this way, The City Beneath Her Feet shows Tynion IV, Charretier, Bellaire, and Bidikar maintaining that perfect ability to tell just enough in a first issue to keep the audience involved. As this is a prestige-sized book with a few extra months between issues, it does need something to maintain interest for all that time. And this set-up is nothing but keeping up that interest throughout. 

Get excited. Get writing.

Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, 510, & 651) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.