Thread is one of this year's Xeric Award winners.  The Xeric Foundation, as many of you will know, does a valuable service by providing financial support to self-publishers - and let's face it, in the current marketplace, self-publishers and the small press need all the help they can get.

Emily Benz and Summer McClinton's Thread is a ten-issue series, 38 pages, no adverts.  You will have gathered that I'm in a very receptive mood for advert-free comics this week, and this is precisely the sort of comic that benefits from being allowed to run uninterrupted.  There's something rather fluid about McClinton's artwork, which often makes for abstractly attractive pages before you even start reading them.  It's got pace.  It flows.  It's a world that has room to breathe. 

It's a thriller, basically.  Frankie is stuck in a dead-end job, uncertain what happened to her family (who have evidently gone missing somewhere along the line), and conscious that she's being followed by people for no immediately obvious reason.  She gets drawn further into the mystery by a guy who might be on her side, and then again might not.  As a set-up issue, it's great, giving us a rounded heroine and a reason to root for her, as well as setting the plot running.  Exactly what a first issue is meant to do.

The press release suggests that in due course we'll be getting into "the greedy and relentless forces of corporate America."  To be entirely honest, that sort of wording tends to put me off, not because I disagree with the sentiment, but because it usually means heavyhanded soapboxing is in the offing. 

It has to be said, though, that there's little sign of that here.  If Frankie is dissatisfied with her place in society... well, she's got every reason to be, so fair enough.  Much depends on what happens when the villains get to be actual characters rather than shadowy presences around the edge; I've seen plenty of good stories go awry in the past because the bad guys were unintended caricatures. 

Hopefully Thread will live up to the promise of this first issue and avoid falling into that trap.  It seems that the creators want to do something about the power of the individual to take control of her life in a corporate-dominated culture, which is a great theme but often difficult to carry off.  There's undeniable talent in this book, though.  If the series lives up to the promise of this issue, it'll be a great read.

Rating: A

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