
IDW Publishing 2015
Created, Written & Illustrated by Chris Ryall & Gabriel Rodriguez
Coloured by Jay Fotos
Lettered by Shawn Lee
Onyx and the military team with whom she’s forged a tenuous partnership head deeper into the jungle, near the location of the alien spore’s arrival, in order to fight the infection that has inflicted both the planet and animals of the region.
Unbeknownst to them, also housed in the jungle is a bio-eugenesis laboratory tasked with creating human/animal hybrids to help maintain the planet’s underground infrastructure. Those hybrids as well as other humans and animals have been mutated further by the spore into horrible, violent creatures.
Onyx and the team are attacked by the mutates. Complicating things even further, the team’s telepath, Abigail, is pulled into a strange nightmare dimension alongside her teammate CiCi. They escape but not before the team’s leader, Yasiel “Cap” Arbona, is merged with the spore, who now controls a human body for the first time, even as its influence over the planet grows to an unstoppable point….
What a truly amazing series this has turned into. From the concept alone to the way the characterization and plot development have been going this far exceeds any expectations I could have had coming into it. That we’ve got this alien here to help, a secret government lab and a spore of unknown origin mutating everything in sight we’ve got this wonderful blend of science fiction, horror and this whole action/adventure war type thing happening stemmed in mystery have made this a unique and wonderful reading experience.
These characters have really made a huge impact on the story and as we see them fleshed out more and more becoming more familiar, real if you will, people their actions and reactions continue to drive the story forward. That this team has no idea just how valuable Abigail is to their survival is one of the best developments. Well that and CiCi’s growing admiration of her.
This issue has all the action and intrigue to really cement this as a high octane thrill ride. I love how this plays out here for us and there’s plenty of oh I was waiting for that to happen alongside wait what just happened moments to really blow your mind. Also as more is revealed about Onyx and what she’s able to do it’s really quite fun to see how things go from moment to moment. Of course all of this leads up to this one hell of a cliffhanger! I couldn’t be any more thrilled, impressed and excited by what these guys are doing here with this. Personally this is the kind of stuff that makes for a hellacious big budget movie!
The interior artwork here is just as impressive as the writing. Yeah while it has a definite comic book style to it making it more akin to a Saturday Morning cartoon but it’s quite effective in demonstrating the fearsome visages of the mutates beautifully. The imagination and creativity on display here is astonishing.
IDW continues to display to the world they’ve got the ingenuity to be a go to company time and again with stories like this.