Things go tits up quickly, as our leading character would say.
Creative Staff:
Story: Joe Harris
Art: Sebastian Piriz
Letterer: Carlos M. Mangual
What They Say:
For centuries, Samurai defended Fukushima Prefecture from invaders. Now, still bleeding radioactivity from the nuclear plant meltdown, a land’s protectors have risen in her hour of need. For the adventure tourists of Disaster Inc. lost inside the Exclusion Zone…this is very, very bad.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As we dig further into Disaster Inc I still move through its tale with unease on a few levels. Joe Harris is handling things mostly right but I’m wary of a story about something that’s still so raw for so many. Other disasters like this have had tales told that expand on it but it always feels like they come much later than this. The story is also one that continues to feel like it should have been an OGN in how it unfolds. Thankfully, Sebastian Piriz puts in some strong artwork here once again with great character designs and a sense of scope and scale in the flashback that really drives home just how disturbing all of this situation really is.
With the way the previous issue unfolded and Melody having her head cut off, everyone else coming together now find themselves in a bit of a panic over it. It doesn’t help that it’s revealed that she’s a federal agent as that sets the tour-runners into a mode of fight or flee in a sense and Abby herself is now realizing that she really did overstay in her time here way too long. It’s interesting watching most of this unfold because you generally see across the book how they’re all starting to essentially lose it. They’re cracking. And as a single issue in the run it may not make for the best of material (and better in trade/single reading) but it does convey exactly how panicked that people would become as the fun of the jaunt now turns decidedly real as the surreal begins to surround them.
Where the book definitely interested me was in the six-weeks earlier flashback that it kicks off with. It follows a pair of SEPCO employees whose families are being well-compensated for them to go down into Reactor 3 where something “strange” is going on. Red flags all around on this in how it plays out but with the first two reactors stabilized and dealt with, how hard could this one be? There’s a good bit of mystery to what’s going on here as they get to the water tank at the bottom and find it empty, but the arrival of a single butterfly at first and something from the darkness below clawing its way up, we see just how the strange is supernatural in nature and about to connect more with the present as we saw before. It’s colored beautifully with a right haunting tone and the result is one that definitely keeps you glued to each panel.
In Summary:
I’m still not sure what to make of Disaster Inc overall but I’m enjoying the individual issues and hoping it all comes together well in the back half of it. There are neat things going on here but I’m just wary of some of it considering time/location and general sensitivity to the issues involved in it since it impacted so many in very recent memory. I think Harris has the right line on it overall and Piriz’s artwork is solid, but there’s just an unease about the property/premise overall that may be keeping me from getting fully engaged with it.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: AfterShock Comics (Kindle)
Release Date: September 2nd, 2020
MSRP: $3.99
