El Fuego

Alexander Yorba is going to save the world.  Everyone who can afford it, that is.  He’s the genius architect who’s busy designing a habitat for humanity on the moon as we face down extinction from an asteroid that’s set to strike the Earth in the near future.  While his efforts will save the truly rich, along with his wife and child, Alex soon finds out that fate has something else in store for him.  When it’s revealed that he has a brain tumor that will likely kill him around the time of the asteroid’s impact, the architect finds himself reconsidering what’s really important in his life and if the fire inside of him has left anything worth saving.

“El Fuego” comes to us from one of my favorite artists working today, David Rubin.  He’s someone who can draw anything and make it look effortlessly stylish.  That’s true here too as we’re treated to a host of near-future cityscapes around the world that dazzle even as the mood grows increasingly apocalyptic.  We also get to see lots of interesting storytelling techniques as Alex encounters old friends and new drugs that he thinks will help him through this crisis.  It all helps to make this mostly dialogue-driven story remain visually interesting throughout – even when there’s no dialogue at all.

If only all of this visual style was in service of a character that was actually interesting.  Alex is presented as one of those optimists whose grand humanitarian ambitions crumbled away as he grew older and began to focus on his magnum opus to the exclusion of everyone else in his life.  Rubin wants the drama in this story to come from us seeing how his protagonist’s creative drive has left him a hollow shell of himself, but if you’ve read one story about a great artist who’s an equally great asshole – and then regrets it – this won’t hold any surprises for you.  Which makes this one for confirmed fans of Rubin the artist only.