If one disaster is bad, then more disasters are… disastrous
Mark Sable began the overthrow of the planet and the beginning of the New World Order in the first issue of Boom! Studios Unthinkable. While things looked bleak as a new plague swept across the world, issue #2 is downright depressing as the secret government goes after a few more targets.
Fortunately for the planet, Alan Ripley sees what’s going on and if the government doesn’t believe his wild claims, he’s going to take action himself. Well, not just by himself, Alan is able to gather most of the previous members of the Think Tank together as they attempt to prevent the world’s oil supply from being infected by a oil eating bacteria.
I haven’t been listening to Coast to Coast AM, Alex Jones, or Jeff Rense as much as I should, so I have no idea if the doomsday scenarios Sable has dreamed up for this series are possible or not. It’s certainly interesting to see the high drama (cooked up by the media) over the Swine Flu, mirror the botulin toxin outbreak, and while the attack on the U.S. Capitol attack hasn’t happened, but quite possible, I don’t know how realistic an oil eating bacteria would be. With so much of the products in the world based on oil, I would think everything would begin to break down, not just oil. Still, there are plenty of scientists working on little bugs that can break down plastics, so extrapolating that to raw oil could be happening in some dark lab somewhere.
The team Alan puts together have their own foibles, so it isn’t a surprise when one turns on the team to protect his monetary interests, and Alan’s father turns out to be a not so nice guy after all.  These reveals end up hurting the issue, and story overall, as it seems these exact same plot points appear in every thriller/espionage story ever made. It really would have been more interesting if the Wolfpack were revealed to be a force for good, instead of mirroring Dick Cheney’s Halliburton.
Even the action seems to stumble in places and there are moments in the story that take just grand jumps in time/space that readers are going to have to pay special attention to who and where all the players are if they expect to keep up.
I think the thing that hinders the story is the art by Julian Totino Tedesco. I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a particular fan of the art style that uses realistic photographs treated in photoshop with heavy lines and half-tone dots. I think it muddies the scene and ends up causing the drawn figures to look like they’ve been pasted onto the background. As for the characters, there is also some confusion as certain characters begin to look very similar under the heavy ink style.
Even with the plot trips and issues with art, Unthinkable #2 continues to be a page turner, as the story unfolds to reveal the global conspiracy. I’m hoping the issue builds to something unique and different in issue #3, but for now Unthinkable #2 earns 3.5 out of 5 Stars.