Advance Review: ‘Undiscovered Country’ #7 Is A Truly Magical Mystery Tour Across A Dystopian America

Up until now anything we have learnt about America and the steps it took to seal itself off from the rest of the global community we have leant from back-up material, but now, as we enter a new chapter in this dystopian sci-fi drama, Undiscovered Country #7 we get two scenes that bookend this issue and set in the past, involving, amongst others, “Uncle’ Sam Elgin, who we saw dying last issue.

Both scene help flesh out a bigger picture, but it’s only pieces of a larger puzzle yet to be completed revealed. Although, even in this glance into the past we learn that America was rotting from within for some time. For some, it would seem you can never have enough, and it’s this selfish, shortsightedness that is implied as one of the factors in America’s adoption of its current long-term isolationist policy. Doctor Elgin may be dead now, but it seems he was one of the few who tried to raise the alarm decades earlier, but was ignored. Hmmm, scientific advise being ignored by those in power when it doesn’t suit their narrative? Not too far from our own reality then, whether intention or otherwise, especially during this pandemic. If he’s a fan, I imagine Doctor Fauci can very easily relate to the younger Elgin in this particular issue, that’s all I’m sayin’.
Between these two telling scenes lies a narrative that reads more like a catch-up for readers old and new as the collected characters abroad a train – making its way into the back heart of America – kinda summarise their current state-of-mind, through shared dialogue, as we travel to a very different part of America to that we have just left, reflected in a very different, and much colder, color palette, courtesy of Matt Wilson, dominated by trees that seem to have blood running through them rather than sap. 
It’s certainly a big job to take on, what with the various flora, fauna and architecture – old and new- artist Giuseppe Camuncoli and Leonardo Marcello Grassi are tasked with, and it certainly pays, when building an all-new fantasy world, to keep a consistency across said world. Camuncoli has been nothing but astounding in his designs, and while he is no longer illustrating The Flash, I’m more than happy to stare at his visuals once again, which has the whiff of old-school comic book classicism to me with the slightest hint of Carmine Infantino to his style. Which, you can imagine, worked exceptionally well on The Flash and works equally well here.

In many ways this is beginning to feel somewhat like an update of the medieval classic, Dante’s Inferno, but rather than travel through the various, and varied, layers of Hell, we have their contemporary equivalents presented here as different parts of America, by writers Scott Snyder and Charles Soule, as a very rag-tag band of brothers and sisters make their way further and further into the heart of darkness. In the first 6 issues we had a more warmer, desert-like America, replaced here with a totally antithetical looking climate. There is a certainly sense of magical realism to this all too, which I am totally buying into. Anything can happen, and that’s part of the excitements and thrill. And, judging from the final shocking, revealing splash page, anything does happen.
A truly magical mystery tour that takes the good, the bad and the ugly of contemporary America, regurgitating it as a sci-fi journey of discover both literal and allegorical.
Undiscovered Country #7 is out Wednesday 5th August from Image Comics.