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A comiXologist recommends:
Injection #1

by: Jonah Chuang

Let me first get this disclaimer out of the way: The Injection had me way before I read this first issue. When I found out that Warren Ellis, Declan Shalvey and Jordie Bellaire (the superstar team behind one of my favorite comics series ever, Moon Knight) would be helming this project, I was already intrigued. Then I read the plot synopsis and I was hooked.

Essentially, there’s a group of crazy people who mess the world up and are trying to fix it. The series deals with those crazies as they deal with the physical manifestations of the fallout of their mistake, the mysterious ‘Injection’. It’s like Fringe, but with all members of the team are Walter Bishops. It’s subtle, mysterious, and very intellectual.

Warren Ellis’s handling of future fiction and mental illness in this book is as spot on as ever. Just as promised in its solicit, this first issue sets up a really complex universe which includes elements of sci-fi, supernatural horror, transdimensional misadventure and paranormal weirdness. These things, however, are not blatantly the focus of the story. If you like Image’s Trees, it’s very similar to that in that the characters only tangentially react to the spectacular elements in the story and mostly just carry on with their individual stories. Part of the reason for that is the characters are crazy, but it also seems to be a function of Ellis’s world building. He’s creating an interesting world where the abnormal comes off as commonplace.

The most captivating part of this book for me is the big mystery surrounding the title. What IS the Injection?? We see the symbol pop up all over the book in weird places but it’s not directly explained. It seems to be responsible for a bunch of mind-boggling craziness, like a lightning and fungi filled parallel universe, or a roasted human plugged into a computer that still talks, that incite your curiosity and inflame your imagination. With such a solid setup I can’t wait to see what kind of magnificent payoff Shalvey and Ellis have in store.

[Check out Injection #1 on comiXology]

Jonah Chuang is a Production Coordinator Assistant at comixology. He’s going to Disney World next week!

Injection #1 is FREE this weekend on comiXology!