The Unbelievable Unteens #3

The Unbelievable Unteens #3

Dark Horse Comics 2021

Written by Jeff Lemire

Illustrated & Lettered by Tyler Crook

Unbelievable Unteens comic book artist Jane Ito finds her world flipped upside down after discovering that the heroes from her comics were real and she was one of them. As she and the team of underdog heroes begin to re-assemble, they find out why their memories were wiped, who was behind this evil plot, and what happened to the powerful foe the demonic Whitewraith!

Oh this issue is terribly exciting for a myriad of reasons but we get to learn who wiped their memories and what the fate of Snapdragon, or Snappy, is. Jeff manages to do this entire issue and a then-and-now format of storytelling as we learn about the past and how it affects the team in the present and I’m not sure I’ve seen it done to this extent and effectiveness before and it’s a wonderful tool to have in your arsenal as writer when it turns out this way. I found myself so caught up in what was happening and seeing how the various characters reacted to this that I found myself so fully engaged in the story. We really have the opportunity to think about what we’re seeing and how it relates to the readers’ own experiences within comics and comics related franchises.

I am a huge fan of the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exquisitely. The character development, which is utterly phenomenal, that we see through the dialogue, the character interactions as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter does a marvellous job in bringing their personalities to life. The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages revealing more and more of the story the more we as the reader want certain things to happen and this kind of reaction is rarely seen, especially to this degree.

I like how we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen. How the layers open up avenues to be explored, and trust me when I say I want to see more of this Doctor Moniker because I have some choice opinions already made about him, and add this great depth, dimension and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is achieved exceptionally well.

Not only is the writing of the then-and-now done so well but the interiors that we see are reflective of this in ways I wasn’t expecting. The contrasting styles are a sheer delight to see happen within these pages. Tyler utilises his natural style for the now segments but the then segments are much more silver into bronze age in appearance and it’s bloody brilliant to see. I would like to see backgrounds play a larger role but it is what it is and with how we see the composition within the panels bringing out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story being so good, well I can accept we see fewer of them. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkably talented eye for storytelling. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows just a great understanding of how colour works. The creativity and imagination that we see is bloody amazing.

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This is everything I could hope for and so much more when it comes to expanding the Black Hammer universe and its teen team supreme. Right now this is so well written and mindbogglingly brilliantly rendered visually that once this arc is over I cannot wait to see what the next arc is going to be about. There’s no way that this is a one and done mini-series. It's just too blasted brilliant for that, or for it to languish too long before another story comes out.