Full disclosure time: I didn’t have any idea that Joshua was working on this series until I saw a depressing Twitter thread about it. His second volume (which I’ll be reviewing toot sweet after the ending of this one) came out right around the time the pandemic started, which severely impacted his ability to promote it, to the extent that it sold something like 4 copies. Not a typo, sadly. I remembered his work from Skyscrapers of the Midwest, a fantastic series I reviewed in the early days of the website, and bought copies of the first two volumes of this series immediately. Quick spoiler-free review: you should too! Or at least the first one, because that’s all I’ve read so far. If you read his stuff back in the day, or if you’ve kept up with his career better than I have, go into this as blind as possible. For the rest of you, I’ll talk some specifics. Things start off abstract, with a series of words turning into sentences, jumbles and finally a person. It’s an unnamed dude that we follow sporadically throughout the book, but the specifics of his purpose are left a mystery. Unless I missed something, which is always and forever a possibility in my reviews. The bulk of the story deals with something called an innernet, which I originally thought was a play on the regular internet, but it’s so much more. A certain percentage (I think it was around 60%) of the population is able to get an implant that lets them keep constantly connected to what is basically a hive mind. The specifics are vague at first, but eventually (keep in mind what I said about spoilers; you can always stop now) we learn that it’s hosted by a young girl who’s kept under constant supervision. Once that comes out the group redoubles their efforts to find a more humane and universal method for keeping people connected, which is when their troubles begin. But that’s towards the end of the book, so I’m keeping that vague. Before then we spend most of our time with Dr. McCabe, a woman who’s taken a job on what is rather casually revealed to be the space station that houses the young woman who hosts the innernet. Dr. McCabe is trying to keep up a long distance relationship, so we gradually watch that fall apart as she tries to keep up with her work. There are bureaucratic troubles galore, we see her get to know the rest of the staff, and things stay more or less calm (with a steady undercurrent of menace) until their big attempt to activate another way to host the innernet. The southern general who speaks at that thing, by the way, is one of my new favorite characters in comics, and I hope we end up getting more of this man that I would never want to meet in real life. I can’t emphasize enough how full of plot and potential this thing is, despite being compellingly readable throughout. Joshua is planning 7 volumes, and from what I’ve seen I can already say that the comics world would be a poorer place if he doesn’t make it. Buy his book, it’s your duty as a comics fan! If that doesn’t work, he’s also doing a fundraiser so he can get through 7 volumes, and he’s only about 1/3 of the way to his goal as of this review, so at least throw some money at the guy. $25
