Mosely #4: The Most High

While Gloria gets a visit from a mysterious being to encourage her to be brave for her daughter, Marvin, and Ruby are fighting their lives, trying to stave off Atum while striving to achieve what it believes to be best for all humanity. It explains how its existence is the logical step in evolution based on thousands of human trials and research and that they can either participate in or die due to the inevitable.

The writing by Guillory (Chew, Farmhand) is a comfortable read that doesn’t lose the reader from the beginning. Most of the story is linear, with back-and-forth scenes between two simultaneous events happening simultaneously, making it easy and exciting to follow. The philosophical conversations between Ruby and Atum about human evolution and the role of machines and technology were at a higher level conversation that was a bit more sophisticated than the usual “Skynet” conversation. Still, they are grounded enough for any reader to understand and gauge. What makes this story even more interesting is that instead of flashbacks to memories or historical moments in the beginning or dispersed throughout the issue, the backup story serves this purpose. This might serve as a way to fill in some details in the current case while setting up and connecting the account in the next, making it a genius way to tell a story like this.

The art by Lotfi (Public Relations, Last Stop On The Red Line) and coloring by Beaulieu (Invincible, I wouldn’t say I like Fairyland) complement the story very well with the narrative. The most impressive artwork in this issue is how they created Atum’s interaction with Ruby in demonstrating to her how humanity is its own worst enemy by using vivid and symbolic visuals that play on some historical metaphors (e.g., human and the snake that represents its evil that is traditionally connected with the story of Adam and Eve from the Abrahamic faiths) as well as futurist, digital imagery to demonstrate humanity’s future. The straightforward idea, but the artwork encapsulates the reader with this metaphor that may not have impacted the reader as much if it hadn’t been drawn this way.

The flashback backup story was also drawn and colored beautifully, using a monochromatic, sepia-toned coloring to hit home that this is a memory, a past event. Although the art looks different than the main story, it works well to distinguish that this is a separate time, another place, a particular state of mind that is still part of the story but in a different way.