When a general goes rogue, he unleashes unspeakable horror on the world, with only a lowly private to act as witness. Your Major Spoilers review of News From The Fallout #1 awaits!

NEWS FROM THE FALLOUT #1

Writer: Chris Condon
Artist: Jeffrey Alan Love
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Publisher: Image Comics
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: June 25th, 2025

Previously in News From The Fallout: In 1962 Nevada, a nuclear bomb test goes awry and unleashes a contaminant into the atmosphere that turns people rotten. Otis Fallows, a private in the U.S. Army who is the only known survivor, flees the army base in search of a safe haven.

FOLLOWING ORDERS

News From The Fallout #1 opens in Nevada on a military base. The general in charge is speaking to a subordinate and orders an unscheduled test of a weapon. At the barracks, the troops are ordered to prepare for a test. One of them, Private Fallows, questions whether they are at a safe distance from the test. His concerns are brushed away, but he puts on a gas mask regardless. The test goes off and the soldiers are ordered to march through the test area. Red ash begins to fall, and one of the soldiers starts playing with it. He then starts acting unwell, and upon investigation, it’s revealed he’s turned monstrous. The other soldiers, except for Fallows, follow suit. Fallows runs off and manages to steal a jeep. He escapes the base and begins searching for somewhere he can hide.

MOVING FAST WITH A LOT OF VIBES

Everything about News from The Fallout #1 is about style and creating a vibe. While most of this is done visually, there’s some stuff going on with the writing that also helps accomplish this goal. The dialogue is very intense on all fronts, from the sinister general musing about beauty and creating a clean slate, to the drill sergeant who only interacts with other characters via yelling out orders. Also, things move very quickly in this issue. The way things bounce from one scene to the next feels kinetic, which is great for giving this a sense of excitement to the events, but doesn’t help at all with creating a connection to any of the characters. Even the closest thing we get to a main character, Fallows, doesn’t really come off as a character designed to relate to, but rather, as a vehicle for the plot to travel through.

VISUALLY FASCINATING AND DISORIENTATING

The art in News From The Fallout #1 is about as stylized as you can get. The first element is a sort of filter on everything, making the pages look like they’re being pulled from a heavily damaged film strip. Then there’s the complete disregard for natural human proportions. Even the non-monsterized characters are elongated and compressed in various ways, often to emphasize motion. There’s also a lot of play between light and dark coloring. Most facial features are obscured and hidden in this issue, but eyes are periodically shown as bright, blinding white light. While this is all well-executed art, its stylistic density distracts from the narrative. Even though the plot is light in this issue, multiple times I found myself having to re-read sections to understand exactly what had happened, because I had been so focused on the art, I didn’t recognize how it was moving the story along.

BOTTOM LINE: A SPECTACLE WORTH SEEING

Don’t expect to get a lot of character development beyond a bare-bones introduction, nor a plot that feels more intricate than a pre-title card scene in a zombie flick. But News From The Fallout #1 still puts together the dialogue and plot it has with a visceral and intense art style to create a truly unique thing to look at. It’s definitely a case of style over substance here, which is honestly not a bad thing in this instance. 4 out of 5 stars.

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