What's The Furthest Place From Here? #7
Readers get a glimpse into the past in What’s The Furthest Place From Here? #7, by writers Matthew Rosenberg and Tyler Boss, artist Josh Hixson, and letterer Hassan Otsame-Elhaou. This issue does some amazing world-building and somehow ups the ante on a series that is continually impressive.
Basically, this issue follows Jack and Diane, two kids from a massive city who leave with their father when the walls are breached. They get stranded in the wilderness, duck a roving gang of cannibals but are attacked by the Strangers. They take Jack and Diane but kill their father. They put them on a bus and take them and other children to a town, depositing them in the movie theater. They discover that the rest of the town is full of children with no grown-ups. Diane learns about the curfew but still sneaks out and is captured by the same cannibals from before. The Strangers come and slaughter them, but she’s still injured. The Strangers bring her back to the theater, eventually coming back and helping her. The ending is a huge surprise that’s not going to be spoiled here.
WTFPFH? has been opaque about the way the world works, tantalizing readers with the truth of the past. This issue blows that wide open. Rosenberg and Boss show adults beyond the Strangers for the first time in the comics and readers get a glimpse of another world, almost, a city full of people walled off from the outside. The great thing about the issue is that as many answers as it gives readers it still keeps things vague enough to leave the hook. So, readers see a city and adults and the Strangers doing Stranger stuff, but they don’t know why. It’s a great way to build the mythology; it answers questions, but just enough to pose even more.
It’s a wonderfully scripted comic. Rosenberg and Boss throw in two fun little pop culture nods from the ‘80s - Jack and Diane’s name referencing John Cougar Mellencamp’s song of the same name and the movie theater playing My Own Private Idaho - and give the book its signature feel. The issue has that feel of horror mixed with bizarre mundanity that have made the book such a wonderful read and the ending is a shock, to say the least, because of what it says about the system with the Strangers.
Hixson is on art for this issue. His linework is heavier than Boss’s, but it’s still detailed and lends itself well to character acting. His best scenes in the book are the most horror oriented ones, the ones in the darkness; his penciling style, combined with the way he colors, give those scenes just that extra bit of fear that Boss’s cleaner pencils don’t always get across. His Strangers almost drink in the light around them and dominate every scene they’re in.
What’s The Furthest Place From Here? #7 is the perfect way to do a lore dump. Rosenberg and Boss present a story that definitely fills in some blanks but not all of them. It’s a well paced and captivating story, one that draws the reader in and never lets go. The art by Hixson is an amazing accompaniment to the script, bringing it to life in the best possible ways. It keeps Boss’s visual language while also using Hixson’s own style to do different things with the art. This book is a treasure and this issue is yet another fine example of why.
