June tries to make sense of the world she is in as she searches for the Source with Dawn and Rishi. When months of travel get them no closer to a solution, what will she do next? Find out in Beyond Real #3 from Vault Comics!

BEYOND REAL #3

Writer: Zack Kaplan
Artists: Fabiana Mascolo, Toni Fezjula, Jordie Bellaire
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Editor: Adrian F. Wassel
Publisher: Vault Comics
Cover Price: $4.99
Release Date: April 17, 2024

Previously in Beyond Real: After a car accident that left her boyfriend Eli in a coma, struggling artist June discovers that the world is a computer simulation. As she tries to find a way to save Eli, she falls deeper into a strange world that has beings, the Formts, that consider her to be unauthorized content and try to contain her, and a voice in the water that urges her to follow the waters to the Source. On her way to do this, she meets Dawn and Rishi, two other women who are here and have been unable to find their way home. Rishi believes that to survive, they must stay away from the Formats, who come from the water. Dawn has heard that others have talked to the water and escaped. But when June uses her powers to destroy a Format, even Rishi believes she may be onto something.

UNCHARTED TERRITORY

Beyond Real #3 opens with June remembering an incident in her past. She worked in a studio with an experienced artist who bluntly observed that she did not know where she was going as an artist. She was all over the place. Ironically, this is also how she feels as she explores the inside of the computer simulation that is her world. Currently, she, Dawn, and Rishi are in a surreal but beautiful mountainscape. June wonders where this is.

And a voice responds. A tree behind them claims they are blocking its light. This surprises Dawn, who believes they are in the afterlife. June asks if they are in a simulation. The tree dourly declares they are in its light. June explains about trying to find the Source, and the tree tells her it is not here. Rishi asks if they need to use their crafting powers. The tree rolls its eyes and tells them they just need to speak to it.

June confidently strides off. She has a purpose, saving Eli, and now she has a sort of plan, which is talking to every place they go until someplace responds. This leads to a montage of a journey in which every place they travel through has some reason not to try speaking to it, such as a variety of dangerous creatures or plants. A cave leads them back to water and a mudslide starts to carry them away. June interprets this as a positive sign.

But they just get washed away and land on a shore. It has now been several days, or months, or even years, and they have not made any tangible progress. Rishi sums their situation up. Everything here is beautiful and wondrous, and they do not belong here. She talks of her past. She was also an artist, a dancer. And no matter how beautiful her dancing was, she always felt lost. She has not been able to find what she is looking for. She walks off. But Dawn agrees to help June.

The next morning June explores and wonders about Eli and whether she will be able to help him, but she feels she has lost her way. A tree speaks up and tells her that perhaps she has no way. It looks like the tree they first spoke to. It claims it is a different tree, and they are on a different hillside. It asks her where she was looking and tells her that her problem was that she was looking everywhere. June becomes frustrated with the cryptic answer, lashes out, and destroys the tree with fire. She finds beauty in the flames and burns down the other trees in the area, which causes the hillside under them to collapse.

SURREAL BEAUTY

The art of Beyond Real #3 is stunning. The transition from past to present happens on a double-page panel that depicts June sinking into the world. Her outfit and swathes of the background are swirled colors that look like paint swirling together, colors that are being mixed but have not yet completely blended. In the spaces between the swirls are smaller images of what is yet to come, and as narration, we see snippets of what June has been told about her art. She does not do it properly. She has no purpose. She has no voice or intent. She is lost. And at that point, she is also very literally lost in the world behind the simulated world she once thought was real.

I like how this issue also takes something like the Hero’s Journey and beautifully turns it into a road that goes nowhere except back to its own origin. I found the trees amusing. They have faces that are tremendously expressive as they float between cantankerous and exasperated. Are they on a hillside or a floating island? Either way, we occasionally get a long shot that hints of several interesting places tucked into the colorful wilderness. Everything surrounding the three women appears to be alive, whether it is the sinuous dragons that flow with the air, or mammoths made of living rock.

BOTTOM LINE: MAKING SENSE OUT OF THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE

Beyond Real #3 lives up to its name and beyond. Despite having powers that can effectively change or edit the world around her, June is still at a loss. She has a goal, but no solid idea of how to achieve it, and her story plays out against the larger backdrop of contemplating what it would mean if our reality was only a simulation.

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Beyond Real #3

97%

97%

Lives up to its name!

June’s quest brings her back to the start, and then she decides to change the rules.

• Writing

  9
• Art

  10
• Coloring

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