The Omega Book #1 // Review
On page four, the odds of the universe ending go from one in six centillion to one in ninety-three. A few pages later those odds go down to on in fifty-five. By the end of the issue, the odds of the universe ending are down to one in seventeen. Time is running out for the universe and it all has something to do with an incredibly powerful text in the first issue of The Omega Book. Writer James Patrick opens a captivating new existential horror mystery with artist Pauli Janquera. It’s an intriguing opening for a contemporary drama.
“A mad scientist died last Tuesday. He was killed by invisible monsters from the unknown. He could see them with his x-ray glasses.” Now his son is forced to clean-up the mess. The scientist in question wasn’t on really good terms with his son. His son is a priest. They hadn’t been speaking. Now his late father has left him with a few strange items and a big mystery involving something that could destroy the whole of the universe. Instead of getting closure with his father, the priest is given a case full of things that were more important to him than his own son...
Patrick frames a strikingly interesting story with sci-fi poetry that meshes into the abstract. The emotional center of the mystery of a late scientist and the son he never spent much time with. Beyond that, there’s a very strong pulse of sci-fi horror in the background that intensifies with each scene. Patrick’s clever enough to be able to do this with style and poise without compromising a delicious sense of overall ambiguity about the story that seems to linger quite appealingly throughout the first issue of the series. It’s an impressive start.
Janquera carries the drama with a moody hand. There’s a powerful sense of weighty intensity that occasionally reaches out into the fantastic. The x-ray glasses that the priest is left by his late father allow the visuals to spill out into realms of the fantastic with a clever hand that moves swiftly though the mystery that’s building around the edges of the central narrative. There’s a great deal in the drama that’s held in wide shots as the son grieves for his father. There’s a delicious stillness beyond the constant pulse of cosmic horror that bleeds-in around the edges of everything.
The alternating fusion between science, religion, cosmic horror and the mundane animate a story that might have otherwise felt like a tired, old tale of a son trying to make som sense out of the life of his late father. Though there IS a very Earthbound and relatable sort of reality at the core of the story, Omega Book’s strength lies in its fusion between different genres that all seem to build on each other. It’s a clever concept for a series in a script that seems impeccably well-constructed from the opening issue.
