There’s this guy. His name’s Gibson Lane. He’s posting videos. He’ll show a stranger his phone. Seemingly in response to whatever he’s showing them on the phone, they...glitch. Then he kills them. Later on, he’s been caught, and they’re reporting it on the news. He’s taken the lives of nearly sixty people. What’s going on? And what does it have to do with the “Undernet?” These questions and more are explored in W0rldtr33 #1. Writer James Tynion IV enters a whole new cyberpunk horror that is brought to the page by artist Fernando Blanco and colorist Jordie Bellaire. 

The small town of Ellison is overrun with reporters. News of the mass killing has raised a huge amount of interest. A casual mass murder is really all that anyone seems to know about. All of the videos of the human glitches seem to have been taken down by the authorities. So no one knows about the weird jagged smears of reality whenever someone is shown the phone. What’s really going on? There are a few people who are quite interested in finding out...and they’re not exactly journalists. They’re people who are looking for answers about the true nature of reality.

Tynion isn’t really doing anything new with the opening issue. It’s a cross between psychological horror and...The Matrix--a movie which was itself a huge cut-and-paste of so much better sci-fi that had come before it. The central horror of reality tearing apart at the glance of a smartphone is kind of a fun idea. Tynion spends a great deal of time in the first issue in heavy-drama mode. Lots of talking heads that aren’t saying a whole lot of interest. There are a lot of concepts that need to be laid out for the upcoming series. Tynion hasn’t found a way to make them intriguing.

Tynion gives Blanco and Bellaire a few really compelling visuals to work with. The opening sequence is brought to the page in a straightforward way that amplifies the weirdness of it. The female lead of the series is remarkably striking. A naked woman with long green hair entering a police station and doing what she’s doing is a very powerful visual to work with. Blanco and Bellaire commit that image to the page in a way that feels strong and impressive, even if the story they’re working with has yet to become truly captivating. 

As bad as it was, The Matrix was a fusion between Philip K. Dick-style artificial reality mind-bending with special-effects-laden martial arts action cinema that made for kind of a novel experience. Tynion isn’t doing enough to make for a novel fusion between all of the elements that make up the story he’s delivering to the page in the opening issue of the new series. It’s not that the drama doesn’t have substantial impact. (It does.) It’s just not a fresh and interesting enough impact to feel like anything new.

Grade: B-