Review - Multiple Warheads: Alphabet to Infinity #1

What do you get when you have a werewolf, a character named Sexica and an organ trafficker going through the same crazy world on different paths? A story that's really so strange it has to be read to be believed. A story such as Multiple Warheads: Alphabet to Infinity #1 from Image Comics.

The issue is written and illustrated by Brandon Graham.

The book follows Sexica and Nikoli--a werewolf--on a roadtrip from the recently destroyed Dead City to the new Impossible City. Their goal? The possiblity of Brunx being available for ingestion. Meanwhil, Nura Blue is an organ trafficker seeking an immortal baron with a penchant for growing his head and limbs back. Those scenarios are just the tip of the iceberg in a world with anthropomorphic cows and frogs, cyber-tronic birds and walking castles.

The world created by Graham is both creative and insane. It's really, really far out there and reads almost like a hallucination that even Samuel Taylor Coleridge would be proud of. There are strange scenarios that the main characters find themselves in that are truly effective at making you stop and re-read a page to believe it. The world the characters inhabit is as much a character as they are.

Graham does a great job showcasing the setting through character interactions with it. For instance, there's one panel where a character is looking to drink some water and has to test it. A panel is devoted to what the colors equate to from the test, showing the reader what the world is like. It's little touches like that which allow you to fully understand the world, without having your hand held while going along for the ride.

The art is probably what steals the show in Multiple Warheads: Alphabet to Infinity #1. In a word, it's trippy. It manages to provoke this sense of an almost beautiful chaos on the reader, where you're really not sure what to expect next. The story by itself is weird enough, but the illustrations just take that strangeness and amplifies it. Significantly.

It's hard to categorize Multiple Warheads: Alphabet to Infinity #1 alongside other books. It's out there much liks Scott Pilgrim is sort of out there, but both books are very different in terms of subject matter. It's a very interesting, unique and dense comic that will likely require mutiple readings to get a full handle on everything going on. It's definitely worth checking out though, as it's not your typical comic book fare.

Multiple Warheads: Alphabet to Infinity #1 is in stores now.