Comic Review: The Unknown Omnibus SC (BOOM! Studios)

The Unknown Omnibus, written by Mark Waid, and illustrated by the late Minck Oosterveer, is new from BOOM this week.

The Omnibus collects the issues of The Unknown issues 1-4 (2009), and The Unknown The Devil Made Flesh issues 1-4 (2010), by the same creative team.

Catherine Allingham, the smartest person alive, has only six months to live. So, in order to solve one massive mystery, (what happens to us when we die?), she hires someone to help her. Well, she’s also the world’s most famous private detective, you see. And she’s seeing demons and things that aren’t there, which kinda makes it hard to travel or investigate anything alone. And, so down the rabbit hole, she goes.

It’s a mesmerizing story, to be honest. It slowly reels you in, page by page. The thoughts are bright, the words are dark. Things go bump in the night, people get bumped off, some sit like a bump on a log. But it isn’t simply a slow slog through eight issues of a nine-year-old comic series. This plot gets deep, dark, into and out of caves and other creepy places. It seems like there is serious magic happening, accompanied by skulky insincere people showing up at all the wrong times. You’ll be entertained.

Colourists are numerous, but it’s all good. Felipe Martins, Renato Faccini, Andres Lozano, with Javier Suppa do a fine job in supporting Oosterveer’s moody line work, and the variant covers included in this volume include several by the supremely talented Erik Jones. Plus, there is a splendid foreword by writer Gail Simone.

BOOM Studios, The Unknown Omnibus, $24.99 for 212 pages of content. Assume Mature Readers