What's The Furthest Place From Here? #8
Wilbur isn’t having a good time with Big Business and starts a sequence of events that builds a new family in What’s The Furthest Place From Here? #8, by writers Matthew Rosenberg and Tyler Boss, artist Ricardo Lopez Ortiz, colorist Roman Titov, and letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou. This is a fantastic issue and the perfect story for the book’s return.
The issue starts with the story of the plague that wipes out the world and where Big Business came from. Wilbur asks how they’re descended from the pigs and is punished for it, made to sleep outside and do the worst jobs. One night, the Wilds surrounding him breaks him, and he runs, making his way to the Pleasure Palace and their family. This leads to an attack by Big Business, which kills everyone but Wilbur and Mallory, who run. They’re found by the Varsity, and a meeting of the heads of the families is called. It goes badly for Wilbur and Mallory, but she kills the head of Big Business and is punished herself. Afterwards, the families vote to start a new one, so they’re back to fifteen, and each one gives up a member, who are taken by the Strangers to a record store to become the Academy.
This chapter is a prequel, telling readers how Mallory got his name and how the Academy was formed. There’s a lot to unpack here. To begin with, it’s impossible to know whether the story told by Big Business is true. It gives readers an origin for why the world is the way it is, but Wilbur’s questions show that it’s a pretty unbelievable origin. The story goes on from there, and it’s just so great. Boss and Rosenberg have given this book a special flavor, and its hiatus was rather long. Just getting to read their style again is wonderful.
The gang wars of WTFPFH? take center stage in this issue, as Big Business slaughters Pure Pleasure. It’s a brilliant way to break up the story and also very shocking. Everything seems like it’s going one way, and then it’s chaos. It’s one of the things that make this comic so amazing; the way it can turn into something devastating in moments. The end of the chapter is the meeting, and it’s quite different from the ones that raiders saw earlier in the book, as it’s not run by the Carnival. It’s more of a parliament sort of thing and a nice bit of world-building. All in all, this issue does a wonderful job of showing how families are made while giving out a perhaps tantalizing clue to what the world was like before.
Ricardo Lopez Ortiz and Roman Titov are the art team for this one. Their style is quite different from Boss’s, but that’s very good. It has more of a cartoony style. The pencils are bursting with energy, and the colors do a beautiful job of lending them even more energy. Lopez Ortiz’s character acting plays into the energetic style, but the often hyperbolic expressions do a terrific job of getting across the emotions of the script.
What’s The Furthest Place From Here? #8 brings this excellent series back with an impressive prequel issue. Rosenberg and Boss do such an excellent job, but that’s to be expected from such an incredible team. Lopez Ortiz and Titov give the issue a different feel from Boss’s, but that’s a good thing. This book was sorely missed, and it’s great to see it back.