Undiscovered Country #3: Time is Not on My Side

A mere three issues in, and Undiscovered Country has completely flipped the script on readers’ expectations at least three times now – and in ways that make sense, rather than being contrived. It’s a dense, attention-soaked story that rewards careful reading and isn’t afraid to layer on the plot.

Right from the start, the premise was bold and audacious: a journey into an America walled off from the rest of the world for thirty years, a literal land of the lost. That in and of itself was a big, baller move with more than a few echoes of current political events. But then once the adventurers got inside the wall, things went from prescient to Beyond Thunderdome: giant land sharks, tribal lunacy, jingoistic madmen galore. The map of the country was a corkscrew of a thing, unrecognizable from anything the explorers might have imagined. Forget the Land of the Free. This was Mad Max by way of the bastard son of Roald Dahl and Hunter S. Thompson. If they let the baby smoke crack a lot.

The intrepid team hasn’t really had time to ask the hard questions as to what the hell is going on, as they’ve been in full-on survival mode from the moment they landed inside the wall. The answers begin to unfold this issue, and boy, it’s a game-changer in the biggest way possible. Without going too deep into spoiler territory, there is much, much, much more to this story than its initial premise would have anyone believe. And also without having all of the pieces of the puzzle yet, there’s still an inherent internal logic that’s gradually being mapped out that makes a certain kind of sense. No nonsensical left turns here. Snyder and Soule are creators at the peak of their cumulative powers, here, delivering a world that few could imagine.

It’s wild enough seeing the husks of Walmarts converted into seedy bazaars, and, per the story’s slowly unfurling logic, makes a certain kind of warped sense. And it’s sobering to hear that in 2024 the government’s solution to mass shootings was to pass a “Liberty Bill” stipulating certain public spaces of a particular size build safe rooms, escape hatches, etc., instead of actually dealing with the problem. But the changes writ large throughout the small piece of America the team has seen thus far appear to speak to the fact that much, much more time has seemingly passed in America than should actually be possible. But how could that be possible? As this new mystery unfolds, possible candidate for a padded room Ace Kenyata stands to be the only man with any answers.

As dense and imaginative as this brave new world is, though, it would only be half as good without a first-class art team to match. Giuseppe Camuncoli and Daniele Orlandini bring everything to life in a stark, shocking way, detail-oriented but not so much as to stumble into the uncanny valley. Everything they create on page looks as though it could actually exist, naturally or not. His faces are extremely expressive, which certainly helps considering the team is all clad in similar all-white get-ups that don’t allow much room for individualized interpretation. It’s a credit to this team that they’re (mostly) all distinguishable from one another.