In the most barren lands of a dying Earth, something inexplicable has happened and this anomaly demands to be investigated. Your Major Spoilers review of Into The Unbeing #1 awaits!

INTO THE UNBEING #1

Writer: Zac Thompson
Artist: Hayden Sherman
Letterer: Jim Campbell
Editor: Konner Knudsen
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: June 12th, 2024

Previously in Into The Unbeing: It’s 2034 the world is an ecological nightmare. A team of scientists working for an organization known as S.I.N.E.W. have discovered the possibility of an impossible new landform and have set out to investigate it.

TO THE BASIN

Into The Unbeing #1 starts with the team leader, Hildur, recounting the story of how her family and town were destroyed by a fire. The four-person team converse for a little bit before they are alerted by their computers. The readings suggest the recent formation of a large land mass that shouldn’t have been possible. Hildur immediately decides that the team should head out to the site of this anomaly, which they refer to as a basin. Her second-in-command protests, but the mission is scheduled for the next day anyways. The next day the team heads out. After so far, they are forced to abandon their jeep and continue on foot. They then encounter strange flora and fauna, before eventually reaching the basin. They are surprised to find that the new land formation has lifeform like features and Hildur decides that the only way they can fully know it is to go inside what looks like the basin’s mouth.

A LITTLE UNFOCUSED, BUT HITTING THE RIGHT NOTES

Right off the bat, Into The Unbeing #1 establishes a sort of cosmic horror element in the same vein as something like Annihilation, with a heavy focus on personal tragedy mixing with a much larger threat. It also introduces the reader to a truly terrifying vision of the apocalypse in that it’s a slow death that is going at just the right pace to be out of control, but still slow enough where bureaucracy and “head in the sand” mentality still control most efforts to combat it. When looking at these parts of the story, this is a wonderful read, where things go wrong is in the characters. With the entirety of the narration being told from Hildur’s perspective you’d expect to get a good look at what makes her tick, but you really don’t, which makes her seemingly rash decisions to act feel inexplicable. Also, we don’t get a lot of time learning about her team, other than a couple of Hildur’s comments, all of which are mostly benign, which also makes her sudden distrust and paranoia of her team somewhat inexplicable. Now, a lot of this can be handwaved away due to the aforementioned cosmic horror vibes this issue has, that doesn’t make this any smoother. Still, the groundwork for this series has been laid and intriguing, also the world that’s been created here is interesting enough on its own.

CAPTURING THE ENVIRONMENT

The colors in Into The Unbeing #1 are the real star of the show in this issue. That’s not to say that the rest of the art isn’t good, it is, but the thing that is going to jump out at you are the colors. In particular, how oppressive they feel while still being mostly pastels and earth tones. Once the characters move into the open environment, everything takes on this bleached out look which makes it look like the entire world has been baking in a kiln. It evokes a certain lifelessness, without having to show any sort of destruction or obvious sign of death.

BOTTOM LINE: COULD’VE USED A FEW MORE PAGES, BUT STILL AN ENGAGING OPENER

Into The Unbeing #1 tries to get the reader invested in both the world contained within it, but also the characters. It succeeds with the former, but stumbles with the latter. The universe created here is legitimately unnerving without being explicit with its horror, the look is oppressive and evocative. The characters though feel somewhat flat making some of the actions of the main character strange, but not in a mysterious sort of way. A couple more pages focusing on just the characters might have been nice. It’s an enticing opening chapter though, and I’m curious to see where this series is going. 4 out of 5 stars.

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