Graphic Novel Review by Kerey McKenna.
It has been a while since I posted anything here to Nerds who Read! Well do not worry. I’m right where you left me back in April...and I’m guessing you haven’t gone much of anywhere either.
Current events have left me with plenty of time to take in all kinds of media while I work at home. Or stay at home on my days off. Pretty much anytime I’m at home I can have a podcast, audio book, or streaming video on in the background. However I haven’t felt like filing a review with Nerds Who Read in a while. This has been for a number of reasons: spending time on new creative endeavors (i.e. perfecting my banana bread recipe), taking time to explore genres that do not relate to the usual Nerds Who Read subjects (RPGs, history, true crime, repeated viewings of Tiger King), and finding that when I did try to write a review it soon became ruminations on current events. Even if the text/media itself really didn’t warrant drawing direct analogies to our present state.
So I stepped away from my reviewer state of mind for a bit and just went about my business. Sometimes I would venture out into the new normal and explore my local main street USA that had been newly modified to accommodate pedestrians and cafe style seating. Last month, stopping into the local comic book store (for the first time since lockdown), I saw the new releases rack and was instantly struck by a bold yet simplistic cover. It depicted a map of North America but with a gaping white void where the continental United States should be.
The new comic book series Undiscovered Country premiered in 2019 and its first collected volume just happened to hit stores in July of 2020. Undiscovered Country is a post-apocalyptic action adventure about plagues, refugees, tribalism, national iconography, and big beautiful border walls. So I dare to say I wasn’t projecting anything onto the text as written as I read it cover-to-cover in one sitting.
Set in the mid-to-late 21st century, Undiscovered Country imagines a world without the United States of America. Thirty years prior the United States abruptly closed itself off from the rest of the world. Nobody and nothing going in and nobody and nothing coming out. All outward broadcasting ceased and an energy field preventing electronic and satellite surveillance. A mysterious “air wall” destroys aircraft, even the smallest drone, that try to enter American airspace. Giant fortifications and armaments are built along all borders and coastlines of the contiguous United States (Roughly 3,987 miles if anyone else was curious like I was). The “Sealing,” as it came to be known, was so abrupt that Americans who happened to be traveling abroad were left outside to fend for themselves. No repatriation, no right of return.
What would they even return to? With no outbound broadcasting and no way to look inside, the world is left to wonder what is happening inside Fortress America. Eventually the nations of the world institute their own quarantine of the lost section of North America to prevent the curious from being struck down by America’s border armaments and perhaps out of fear that the Americans will retaliate brutally to stay isolated.
Over the decades the world trundles along towards apocalypse and whatever happens inside the former US becomes a matter of academic speculation. The new political poles of geopolitics are the rival super coalitions of The Alliance Euro-Afrique and The Pan Asian Prosperity Zone. Both blocks are being ravaged by increasingly hostile environmental changes and the mysterious “Sky Virus” that has no cure or vaccine.
Just as the world powers are resigning themselves to the collapse of civilization they receive a message from inside the new dark continent. Sam Elgin (a man sporting a dapper soul patch reminiscent of Uncle Sam), known as a figure within a mysterious US government think tank in Colorado, invites the great powers on a diplomatic mission deep into American territory with the promise of a cure for the Sky Virus, and perhaps, the reopening of America. He provides instructions on how a small diplomatic mission, composed of members of his choosing, may enter America to negotiate. They are…
The Graves Siblings: American expats who as children were sent out of the country just before the Sealing. As their parents were colleagues of Sam Elgin, perhaps they had some forewarning about what was to come? One became a doctor on the front lines of the fight against the Sky Virus. The other became a mercenary and had previously made attempts to breach the mysterious American border.
Dr. Ace Kennyatta: A Canadian wunderkind expert on American History and unsanctioned researcher into the American self-quarantine.
Colonel Bukowski: A Polish soldier whose time as a POW left him both with the praise of his nation and with the burden of survivor’s guilt.
Valentina Sandoval: A crusading journalist, whose pursuit of the truth above all else soon threatens to put her on a blacklist as far as corporate and government news agencies are concerned.
Janet Worthington and Chang Enlou: Envoys to represent the interests of their respective rival super nations. While officially it is a joint mission it is soon made clear that either one of these diplomats would take any opportunity to gain an edge over each other.
Per instructions this small band takes a single helicopter and goes where no outsiders have ventured in 30 years, over America’s border wall where no lamp is lifted beside the golden door.
Almost immediately things go sideways. Flying in the southwest (presumably somewhere over the California and Nevada desert), the copter is shot down by denizens of the new American West who do not take kindly to outsiders.
It seems a sizable chunk of territory is now ruled by the warlord “The Destiny Man.” The Destiny Man commands a nomadic horde based out of a Walmart/Amazon superstore now made mobile with giant treads like something out of Mad Max or Mortal Engines. They love their big beautiful walls, their flag, and defending what they have against all enemies foreign and domestic, but somewhere along the line they seem to have forgotten about freedom and the pursuit of happiness. Perhaps they need a rousing reading of the Preamble of the US Constitution by William Shatner?
The Destiny Man is opposed by a rag tag group of rebels (perhaps the truer inheritors of the American Spirit?) called the Silent Minority. The rebels are led by “Uncle Sam” who much to the confusion of the diplomatic envoys looks like Sam Elgin but has no recollection of inviting them.
Now so far my description of a post-apocalyptic tale of tribes descending into caricatures of their former nations may sound like well-trod ground narratively and visually. But just as things might be seeming overly familiar, the book starts to play some more cards. Firstly, the Destiny Man and his marauders are visually bizarre. Beyond the standard issue post-apocalyptic punk culture costumes, many of their faces are obscured by astronaut helmets, and those parts that aren’t covered by patched up NASA leftovers reveal strange mutations like claws and tentacles. They ride strange beasts like giant spiders, or sea creatures like sharks and octopuses that shouldn’t be able to “swim” through the desert sand. Even the page composition and coloring when they are around is uncanny and psychedelic, whereas previously the aesthetics of the book had been gritty and realistic. Laying more cards on the table to build a straight, the authors begin to reveal the back stories of the heroes. They are not all who they appear to be.
Completing the winning hand, it is revealed that the American interior has become more bizarre then the heroes, and the reader, would have ever imagined. An America divided not just by ideology and geography, but by the warping of the laws of space and time.
As I implied, post-apocalyptic tales are not hard to find and nothing new. Given current events you may be seeking them out or avoiding them on any given day. While this comic doesn’t completely reinvent the genre, the debut run signals that its creators are excited to put their own spin on things and I would like to see where they go with this.
Now for one of those personal ruminations I had been avoiding shoehorning into a review where it would not belong. In early January of this year I was lucky to go on an American adventure of my own, driving cross country with a friend from Seattle to Boston. From sea to shining sea as it were. It was a cross country marathon, we only stopped in hotels twice in the course of the trip; otherwise we slept in shifts in the car. It was the middle of winter and my companion was on a tight time schedule so we didn’t get to stop to see much of anything besides rest stops and diners. Yet driving along we saw amazing natural vistas, remarkable feats of engineering, and glimpses of how other people live in different parts of the country. Just the other night I was joking with my friend, “Hey the way things are going now, in the future when we tell our descendants we drove cross country in 2020, they will assume we did it dodging plague epicenters and crossing through either lawless fiefdoms or a series of independent red or blue nation states.”
God, I hope in a year's time that remark and this comic will be dark whimsy...and not prophetic.
Kerey McKenna is a contributing reviewer to Nerds who Read and SMOF for the annual Watch City Steampunk Festival in Waltham, MA. Check it out at www.watchcityfestival.com.
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