Broken Frontier

Imagine being asked to think the unthinkable – to design nightmare scenarios.  Now imagine those nightmares coming to life!

Boom! Studios push the envelope a little bit with their latest offering: Unthinkable.  The company is known for highlighting stories that have a cinematic feel and this title certainly has that.  It also has some really complex and even frightening characters as well as a tenor that is darker than many of their offerings of late.

Alan Ripley is a writer of fluff thrillers and big budget Hollywood action movies… at least until the tragedy of 9/11 strikes home for him.  He is given the chance to put his talents to work for the government – joining a clandestine group designed to think up worst-case scenario attacks on the United States so that the government can prepare for them.  When it all ends as abruptly as it begins Ripley is left to drift… that is until he sees the nightmares he and others thought up start to come to frightening life!

Writer Mark Sable is no stranger to the world of Hollywood and he already has several comic book mini-series under his belt as well.  With this story, however, he delves deep into fears that reside in the American psyche post 9/11 as well as theories that sound like they come from the polemics of ardent conspiracy theorists.  In the midst of this swirling darkness, his main character stands out as a good man but a rather ordinary one.  He is flawed but there is an aura of genuineness about him that readers quickly warm to.  He is neither a soldier nor a hero – he’s simply a guy with an imagination.  Which makes Sable’s central conceit all the more intriguing – that someone has turned that imagination into a weapon.

Artist Julian Totino Tedesco has also been busy for Boom! Studios, having recently come from providing the artwork for their The Remnant mini-series as well.  For Unthinkable his style seems to have a harder edge.  There are more shadows and his figures are sharply delineated, with lots of hard angles to their faces.  There are few action sequences here but he definitely brings a sense of impact to the scenes of horror and destruction.  Where he really shines are with the smaller, character moments.  He proves that he has a talent for summing up an entire range of emotions and of the end of a passage of time with only a single panel.  This skill is not missed by the reader and leaves a real impression.

Unthinkable #1 is an encapsulation of a number of nightmares.  It is the fears we are afraid to voice, it is the “crackpot” theories that we laugh at even as we are frightened that someone could think these things, it is the possibility that everything just might go irrevocably wrong, it is the darkness at noon and here there is only one man who might be able to turn the tide.  Do you dare to think the unthinkable?