Image Comics Review: Undiscovered Country #1
[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]
Writers: Charles Soule and Scott Snyder
Artists: Giuseppe Camuncoli and Daniele Orlandini
Letters: Crank!
Colors:
Reviewed by: Carl Bryan
Summary
New York Times bestselling writers SCOTT SNYDER (WYTCHES, A.D.: AFTER DEATH) and CHARLES SOULE (CURSE WORDS, the forthcoming novel Anyone) will team up with artists GIUSEPPE CAMUNCOLI (The Amazing Spider-Man, Darth Vader, Hellblazer) and DANIELE ORLANDINI (Darth Vader) and 2019 Eisner Award-winning colorist MATT WILSON (THE WICKED AND THE DIVINE, PAPER GIRLS) to embark on an epic adventure in the brand-new ongoing series, UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY! In this special oversized first issue, readers will journey into the near future, and an unknown nation that was once the United States of America—a land that’s become shrouded in mystery after walling itself off from the rest of the world without explanation over thirty years ago. When a team seeking a cure for a global pandemic breaches U.S. borders, they quickly find themselves in a struggle to survive this strange and deadly lost continent!
Positives
The first thing you need to do is to go to page 35 of the comic and start reading the origin. My advice as a reviewer is that you need to see the simplicity of the journey towards the origin of how this comic came to be. Charles Soule and Scott Snyder jogging and ultimately expressing their ideas, until you have this awesome new storyline.
Then you need to keep going to page 38 to see how they developed the logo. Once you marvel at that, then take a look at page 40 where you really see why the cover looks as it does. The simplicity but also the story telling within the story through just one picture flipped for perspective! That’s art!
And realize after that, you have not even read the comic yet, but you are now so involved you have to! And your eyes cannot process it enough and the words cannot come fast enough to your brain!
Positives (even more accolades)
Granted that when I saw that Scott Snyder (He of all The Batman Who Laughs stuff now going on) was involved, I knew I had to read this book. It’s like buying that Stephen King book, and you know you are going to see the same rhythm and dance with the words. This one is, but it isn’t. There are no capes or cowls. Only the concept that the USA has been closed off from the world for thirty years. And a virus that has been plaguing the world now has a cure within the walls of the US. Their leaders have been monitoring the outside, but not contributing to the wars, the treaties nor the economies.
The world is about six months away from destruction. And the USA has decided its time to be that beacon of hope again. And through a video message containing an invitation, a team from the outside is venturing into a United States that has not been open in thirty years.
Sky Virus… keep that term close at hand as this is what is affecting/infecting the Earth. I love the pace of the flashback scenes and then into the here and now of arriving in the US. It reads like a movie and if rumors pan out, it should be a screen play pretty soon!
Charlotte Graves—she’s the key and an epidemiologist who is going to be key in this mission. This should be one well developed character by the end of this run!
Negatives
Wordy with all the balloons. But that is to be expected. There is a lot to pour into dialogue with a first issue and the cramped space of a team of seven people in a helicopter. So even the airspace can get tight. So allow yourself to drink in a lot of dialogue as this reads like a novel. We just get the added extra of superlative art by Giuseppe Camuncoli and Daniele Orlandini .
Verdict
So I cannot wait for December 11, 2019 as Christmas comes early! That is when issue #2 is released and then you should mark your calendar for January 15, 2020 for issue #3. The buzz/hype/anticipation is real, and you will be ahead of the curve if you invest your time and money into this series!
