The Tomorrows #4

by Forrest.H on October 28, 2015

Writer: Curt Pires
Artist: Andrew MacLean
Design: Dylan Todd
Colors: Adam Metcalfe
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: October 28, 2015
Cover Price: $3.99

In the opening interview of The Tomorrows issue #4, Curt Pires, speaking through the man behind the in-fiction Tomorrows Aldous Ellis, drops the act.

“Part of what we’re trying to do here is erode traditional structures. Reject binary classifications – dualist worldviews – us vs. them mentalities. In that regard, we’re unclassifiable,” Ellis says, speaking about his subversive team of cyberpunk anti-heroes the Tomorrows. The person that’s really talking, though, is Pires. He, too, is talking about The Tomorrows of course, the comic itself.

It’s all very Meta, fifth dimensional stuff (aaayyyyyy), an in-universe, and simultaneously very real artist statement. Pires tells us exactly what he’s trying to do with this comic, what he’s trying to do with all of his comics if you’ve been following along, really. I think it works.

Especially so, with the art of Andrew MacLean, Dylan Todd and others from this carefully selected and capable team to accompany it.

You could make the argument that this should’ve been the first issue in the Tomorrows run, you could make the argument that it should be the last, too. It’s that kind of issue, one that ties everything together and simultaneously undoes everything you may have thought the book has been about this far. It’s special that way.

It depends on how comfortable you are with this kind of narrative structure. That structure being that there essentially is no strict, rigid way to view this narrative. If you’re into that (I am) you’ll love it.

If you’re not, you may be feeling lost but that’s okay, too. Let it wash over you, absorb MacLean’s simple but expressive and tightly choreographed art and the pop of the cyberpunk, meditative colors. It’s a visual story as much as it is a wordy one and this issue is just as beautiful if not more so than the ones that preceded it.

Sure, the issues it touches on (drones, gentrification, and new phones ad infinitum) are things we’re absolutely inundated with right now, things you may never want to hear about again, and they’re dealt with a little bluntly here. But, that doesn’t make them any less important. It certainly doesn’t mean they’re central to the story either, they’re merely tools to explain the world the Tomorrows exists in, a catalyst for the exploration of the human spirit under oppression in a world that’s eerily similar to our own.

That’s what this book is, really. A series of looks, through different lenses, at our world a few years from now, at the repercussions of our current course, and a call to arms. Pires, MacLean and others have done something really special here that won’t make any sense without the issues before it, but also makes perfect sense completely on its own. It’s an anomaly, one you have to read for yourself but one I enjoyed very much.