W0rldtr33 #17 // Review
It’s 1999. The guy that Gabriel is talking to is about halfway into Dune. He wants to talk. He wants to talk about the undernet. He wants to talk about the internet. They’re going to shut the door on the undernet. It’s just the opposite of the internet. It’s a matter of binary. It’s a matter of the negative beyond the positive. As the internet gets more powerful, so too does the undernet and it’s got to stop as plans are made in W0rldtr33 #17. Writer James Tynion IV and artist Fernando Blanco continue a cyberpunk horror sage with colorist Jordie Bellaire.
It’s 2024. The internet is down. Everywhere. There’s a guy on the TV who says they’re working at it. Trying to get it all back up. It could take a couple of weeks. For now, everyone is limited to basic SMS texts of 160 characters or less. It’s a start, though. There’s a lawyer walking trough a tent city to get to her car. It’s in a parking structure. Special Agent Silk is waiting for her there. The lawyer in question isn’t exactly an easy person to get ahold of, so she had to go to extreme measures and meet her in person.
Tynion’s story jumps across the first quarter of the 21st century somewhere around halfway through the issue. There’s a jarring sense of narrative lurch that comes with that leap. There’s no questioning that it’s intended. There’s a darkness lurking around the edges of the central story, which is pretty bleak in and of itself. There isn’t much that anyone can seem to do about the situation and everyone is forced to just...live in it. Though there IS a sense of momentum that’s brought about by various elements in the plot, it feels pretty murky.
Tynion’s darkness is pretty well matched by Blanco’s heavy inks. The deliciously persistent darkness capture the shadowy nature of everything while Bellaire’s color delicately wash-out everything that isn’t totally dark with ink. Everything feels faded...like it’s a copy of a copy of a copy. Blanc manages to capture the details that matter. There’s just enough there on the page to suggest a vivid reality of a 2024 that never really happened and a conversation in 1999 that’s equally fictitious. There’s a strong sense of atmosphere that seems to set-in around the edges of everything as Tynion’s story continues.
Everything progresses with a sense of purpose as the story carves out a shadowy horror of a world that rests somewhere between now and a past that never was. It’s a sharp feeling of anxiety that’s seeping out over a contemporary world on the verge of some kind of collapse as AI claws its way into everything. The story rests on the edges of anxiety as a world of nightmare stalks the margins of digital consciousness. It’s a fun drama that seems to be subtly hiding the horror in the current issue. It’s there. You know it’s there...but it’s not obvious...
