THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MILD SPOILERS.
by Jarrod Jones. Just in case you don’t get the hourly notifications, being online can be a spooky thing. The idea of people being radicalized on the same platform where you can watch interminable video game streams is scary enough; thanks to Worldtree — or, as it’s styled, “w0rldtr33” — now there’s a place where the internet can get you to kill for it, too. It’s enough to make you run screaming from the grid.
In Worldtree (seriously, I’m not typing “w0rldtr33” again), internet paranoia is brought to a simmer courtesy of co-creators James Tynion IV and Fernando Blanco. It introduces a secret undergirding beneath Al Gore’s World Wide Web called, yep, the Undernet, a place where bad people do bad things. Or it’s where troubled people are compelled to do bad things; that’s not clear yet. What is the Undernet, and who is its sysadmin? That’s for future issues. As it stands, the co-creators of Worldtree have big plans, and it wouldn’t do to reveal any of its secrets just yet.
They could stand to reveal one or two. This debut issue, which almost seems to be willing itself to become the latest horror comics reading phenomenon, has conspiracies and slaughter like a good Tynion tale ought. Like most modern comics debuts, it’s deliberately and frustratingly short on character details, favoring shock gimmicks and narrative positioning to an obscene degree. (Hello, 12-panel grids.) We know that a podcaster named Ellison Lane (don’t make fun, now) is bringing Fausta — his co-worker? Lover? Both? I’m not 100% sure — to meet his parents just as his little brother Gibson (again, be nice) streams a killing spree on Instagram. This modern world, I’m telling you.
Gibson goes door-to-door and flashes his phone’s Undernet app at his victims, who then glitch out and leave themselves open for a proper stabbing. Earlier, Fausta name-drops Goatse, so maybe what Gibson shows these poor people is something worse than Goatse. We don’t know. Regardless, Gibson gets busted by the cops, and Ellison and Fausta detour to see him in jail, where even more glitched-out things happen.
Worldtree feels a bit dusty, considering how modern and relevant it’s aiming to be. Jordie Bellaire provides Matrix greens where applicable and makes our regular world look achingly so. (It’s a typical contrast to have given the material, though Bellaire gives the book her reliably thorough eye for detail.) The password-coded style lent to its title and antagonist — more on her in a minute — gives me unwelcome FearDotCom shivers. (Er, don’t Google that.) The Undernet and the disaffected crew of programmers who discovered it reminded me of the grumpy tech crew from Transcendence.
Dustier still is the book’s dopey antagonist, who goes by — for the last time, stop giggling — PH34R. She parades around the issue buck-ass naked with tribal tattoos and gives off a general vibe that says “Die Antwoord circa 2015.” She monitors Gibson’s Undernet spree killing and seems pleased by its outcome. She also appears to have plans designed to upset a posh Targaryen-hued mystery man named Gabriel. As for Gabriel, he knows what the Undernet is and admits out loud during one of Blanco’s many shot-reverse-shot layouts that it may be too late to stop it.
If you’re beginning to suspect that Worldtree might involve a more extensive roster of characters before long, give your copies of The Nice House on the Lake a big hug. As first issues go, Tynion is too disciplined a writer not to leave readers tottering over a cliffhanger. But he’s so concentrated on mystery and frights that the issue’s few emotional hooks are almost glossed over entirely. (It certainly doesn’t help that his ear for overtly naturalistic dialogue saps conviction from some of his characters.)
Ed Piskor is currently working on another internet-murder comic called Red Room; it’s an unnerving horror series because the people doing murder in it are of sound minds. It’s also fun to read because each issue is designed as a one-and-done that builds upon the seedy world around it. Worldtree chalks up its mayhem to a case of glitchy internet sniffles caught by very-online dorks looking for a bad time, and it wants you to froth at the mouth for each new monthly reveal. Maybe Worldtree will get around to telling us what PH34R is all about, or maybe we’ll have already clicked over to something else by the time it does.
6.5 out of 10
W0rldtr33 #1 is in stores now. For purchasing information, click this.
Image Comics / $3.99
Written by James Tynion IV.
Art by Fernando Blanco.
Colors by Jordie Bellaire.
Letters by Aditya Bidikar.
Check out this 3-page preview of Worldtree #1, courtesy of Image Comics:
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