Article by Sean Wilkinson,
a.k.a. The Retrospectre.
So...third time's the charm, because I've spent the past week false-starting on the
Werewolves,
Vampires,
Zombies, and
Demons miniseries, trying to figure out the actual reading order of
Unleashed because
the Zenescope wiki's chronological reading order is wrong again. They listed
Werewolves: The Hunger as being set
before the issue I'm actually going to review today, despite it being set after the four other Hunters had been freed from the Shadowlands.
So...damn. I already wrote intros and harvested assets for two other reviews before this and read each of the four series far enough to realize things don't make sense without tackling this issue first. The next four weeks will cover Vampires, Zombies, Demons, and Werewolves, in that order (until I find another complication).
Unleashed #1
Day Breaks
According to the preview page (which uses the cover by
Ivan Nunes that is also used as the cover for the
Vampires & Werewolves Trade Paperback),
Day Breaks is a double-sized issue. And, yeah; it's huge, and it wastes no time picking up, essentially, where
Hunters: The Shadowlands left off (accounting for time dilation, of course).
Using the essence he got from
killing Venus (as he did with Prometheus' energy centuries earlier), the Being hears Samira (who has been in the Shadowlands for all that time, slaughtering the monster army out of superiority, boredom, anguish, bloodlust, and religious fanaticism, because her mindset makes total sense) praying desperately, and decides at last to open the Shadowlands and...
Unleash the worthy monsters upon the Nexus. Wasn't that
a Scooby-Doo movie in 2004?
But because the power used to do that was derived from a slain Olympian (the "All-Power," as Zeus calls it), the ripples of it are strong enough that the Father Of the Gods can sense its use (though Neptune and Heather can't for some reason), and the three of them go to investigate, only for Zeus to be humbled, Neptune to have his trident broken, and Heather to be killed, all at the Being's hands. Watching him
dog-walk The Dark One and...disarm Venus to death was satisfying and impressive, but winning against Olympian gods at a three-on-one disadvantage so brutally that it gives Hades the creeps (he's the God Of Death and Monsters, remember? Or he was, before the Being sought to embrace half of that title) is
really how you get an event-level villain over.
The way you get a story like this over (besides having
Pat Shand as writer) is packing in small but significant moments (like Sela continuing to help random extras through the Grimms' fairy tales even though she hasn't had the Book Of Provenance—which Morrigan calls the Book Of Power—for almost a decade at this point) and ensuring that the greater threat is felt at all levels. Following the "even Death is afraid of the Being" theme, Morrigan is the one to warn Sela of
the prequel's title. Shang doesn't know what it means that a shadow is falling. The Keepers can't see what's happening (the reason for this is to come later in the event, and it's foreshadowed well, but also very unoriginal as comic book tropes go, which makes it kind of predictable). For everyone concerned (and they are very,
very concerned), shit is getting real.
But the timeline makes very little sense, thanks to the paneling and page transitions. Logically, we can assume that the
Unleashing (opening of the Shadowlands) took place several months to a year ago, if not more, giving the Hunters enough time to get acclimated to the modern world. But this would mean the sudden resurgence of monster activity (there have been Werewolves since
the first issue of the franchise, Vampires since
the second Halloween Edition, Demons since
Inferno and
Salem's Daughter, and Zombies in various forms since
before Jesus was born, but nothing on this scale) has gone unnoticed by anyone for just as long, and even
with government resources at his disposal, Shang has been unable to locate four of his most promising recruits for all that time as well. Granted,
Sela has been either in another Realm,
in prison, or
stopping several consecutive apocalypses, and the world at large has had to deal with
a Neverland incursion in New York,
a global Flesh Reaver invasion,
Ares declaring war on the Greek government, Lovecraftian sea monsters drinking the ocean, and
a sun god immolating the Great Wall Of China, so the public consciousness has been otherwise occupied. But that's
a lot of disbelief to suspend to turn these circumstances from "the writers didn't think of this yet" into a coherent diegetic sequence of events.
Add on that this issue of Unleashed arranges its occurrences as happening in close succession with no indication of a timeline (establishing phrases like a time, date, and location or vague language like "The Past," "Now," "Then," "Later," or "Elsewhere"), and it's a mess to follow despite being fairly linear.
But setting all that aside, the exchanges between Elijah and Roman (with similar paneling to what will open the
Zombies series) and Sela and Helsing (which will be recreated in a different art style in one of the
Vampires short stories) are a joy to experience again (not to mention the reveal—to Sela, because dramatic irony is awesome when done right—that
Belinda is alive), and the action is clear and impactful. Oh, and the Being has kidnapped Shang and built Samira a floating kingdom in the Arctic so her people can enjoy
30 Days Of Night. Turn your logical brain off so the undead don't get you, and you'll have a good time with this one.
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