Spread #1
Written by Justin Jordan
Art by Kyle Strahm
Published by Image Comics
Imagine what the world could have ended up as if John Carpenter’s The Thing got out of Antarctica, but a small segment of the population was immune to it. That’s the basic premise of Spread. Sure, the Spread is easier to kill, but it’s every bit as gruesome as to look at as The Thing, and spreads with alarming rapidity. Justin Jordan wrote that one of his inspirations was to tell a story set after an apocalypse, which puts this story right in the vein of The Walking Dead.
At some point, a violent organism known as the Spread effectively demolished civilization. The organism resembles a sort of protoplasm that takes various grotesque shapes and can infect human beings to create more of it. A small percentage of human beings were naturally immune, and these people are the raiders and survivors of this wasteland. While investigating a plane crash, a survivor named No finds a wounded woman who begs him to save a baby the raiders stole. No finds the raiders and dispatches them, rescuing Hope but attracting the attention of the Spread. The two are cornered, but Hope’s tears kill the nearby Spread and allow them to escape. Understanding her importance, No sets off, though we as the readers are not sure where he’s going.
Before I go any farther, I have to acknowledge the similarities that this book shares with X-Men’s Messiah Complex. There’s a baby named Hope, and Hope has an ability that everybody else around her desperately needs in order to stay alive. There’s a grizzled tough guy who sorta looks like Wolverine with bed hair who wants to protect her. The similarities to Messiah Complex don’t detract from this book, but given how close they are, they’re worth acknowledging if only to get them out of the way.
Spread certainly doesn’t lack for action, throwing the reader directly into the mayhem of a plane crash, a fight against the raiders, and the subsequent escape from the Spread. Still, the big tease that we don’t is seeing what exactly is left of this world that has gone straight to hell. Evidently, people can still manage to get planes into the air, so there must be some institutions or groups left that are organized. I’m pinning my hopes on subsequent issues to flesh out the surrounding world and show us what’s become of society. The art style is nicely, and it’s at its best when depicting the Spread. It has a certain nauseous feeling to it, especially as it forms rudimentary eyes, mouths, and appendages. I do wonder why all of those raiders weren’t wearing shirts in this obviously frigid landscape. I don’t care how badass you are, nobody survives an apocalypse by being reckless with the cold. It’s a small quibble, and this could shape up to be a good series.
