Advance Review: Back To The Ordinary Terror In ‘W0rldtr33’ #3
by Tom Smithyman
Overview
This risk-taking series continues to impress. After taking an issue to explore trivial human interactions, the creative team wisely changes tack and provides a more straightforward tale. While there are no huge revelations this time out, the issue move the plot forward nicely.
Overall
9/10We now return to our regularly scheduled story.
After an issue in which writer James Tynion IV had fun exploring the mundanities of our everyday speech – juxtaposed against the cold logic of computers and artificial intelligence – W0rldtr33 returns with a more straightforward issue to move the plot along.
And that plot has the world seemingly teetering on the edge of oblivion thanks to a malicious internet presence called the undernet. It has already caused Ellison Lane’s younger brother to kill 60 people, and now his would-be girlfriend is infected as well. Meanwhile, the FBI are after him and he’s been kidnapped by the group of people who discovered the undernet years ago. Oh, and he’s being stalked by a naked woman – the personification of the undernet – who is killing anyone who gets in her way.
Tynion’s story combines the best of horror and sci-fi with great results. There’s just enough going on to keep the readers engaged, but not so much that it confuses them, causing them to lose interest. And by changing things up in the last issue, he sent the signal that anything is possible with this series. Wisely, though, he reverted back to a standard story for this chapter. One issue filled with small talk is intriguing. Any more than that is bloat – as has been seen lately in his other standout series Something is Killing the Children.
The downside of a more straightforward story – especially this early in the series – means that artist Fernando Blanco doesn’t have as much to sink his teeth into. While there are some great pages, many of the panels are standard headshots to help carry the story forward. He pulls them all off with skill, and a sequence where we see a character experience a little of the undernet is especially chilling.
And we simply cannot get enough of the lovely but deadly Ph34r. She casually remarks about what a nice day she’s having just before repeatedly smashing a driver’s head into the car window – a smile on her face the entire time.
If the creative team can continue this momentum – and there’s no reason to believe otherwise – W0rldtr33 is going to dominate readers’ pull lists for quite a while.
W0rldtr33 #3 will be available for purchase tomorrow.
