Creative Staff:
Story: Joe Harris
Art: Martin Morazzo
What They Say:
Throwing his life of privilege and comfort aside, fugitive oil heir Chas Worthington plants a flag on the floating continent of trash known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and proclaims it his own, sovereign nation. But he’s not the only one who’s come to check out Earth’s newest, strangest frontier!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Though I was a touch dismayed in the first issue that our lead is a teenager, Great Pacific is the kind of book that gets to be enjoyable because it does try to go with the big risks and have fun with things in a grand way. While the world of changes in big ways over the years, it’s often hard to see and only in historical context that we can really see the importance of it. With Chas Worthington taking his death and heading to the Great Pacific trash heap to found a new nation as part of his larger agenda that’s slowly revealing itself, it’s the kind of movement that’s appealing to watch because of the scale, the risk and the absurdity of it as well. you have to suspend disbelief well enough to allow it to work, and if you do you get something pretty fun.
Chas continues to be hard to read in a lot of ways since there’s a naive feeling about it mixed with the intricate and complicated things that are being pulled off here, but seeing the foundation of New Texas in the Pacific is certainly amusing as you can imagine how that will go over in general. The scale of the place is intriguing as is the way they’re setting up shop there to have areas where they can build and do things to survive. It’s colonization at its heart and that’s something that we don’t see in the world anymore for obvious reasons. But Chas has other plans amid it, though they’re left unstated at this point, as we know his HERO project can do a lot in breaking things down and recycling them in other ways, but that’s just a launching point for him and what he really wants to do is still a mystery. That’s enticing, though I do want to get a little more of a hook here so I know more of what I’m getting into.
The book spends its time well in dealing with his exploration of the island while the foundations are set by the team he’s hired to do that, and we also get to see that there are those that visit the island of a more natural side of things that aren’t exactly pleased by him being there, though they’re also trying to warn him about the giant creature that resides in the area that’s about to start tearing things up. But I was also really interested in what’s going on at Worthington Energy where they’ve learned about his death being faked but also how he bilked billions through various channels to fun what he’s doing. The time with the government agent is amusing and sad at the same time because of her connection to the place, but we also see how Chas can potentially survive all of this since they’re interested in his device, which could reshape the world.
In Summary:
Great Pacific is playing in a loose kind of way while acknowledging the reality of the world with some of the things it references and how other nations will react. What I continue to like is that Chas is definitely playing in a big way with things, a kind of youthful idealism and hopefulness, combined with the uncertainty of youth but also really executing things in a way that has him as a young genius of sorts. I’m unsure of what his real goal is, which is fine, though I’m hoping for more teases to see whether it’s a move that I want to support or not. The island itself is interesting and I’m really curious about what will happen internationally in a political sense, but also see what can be explored with those that are already visiting the island that Chas didn’t quite expect.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Image Comics
Release Date: December 5th, 2012
MSRP: $2.99
