Review: Beyond The Breach
Vanessa is driving into the great Californian outdoors, leaving her old life behind. That old life ended when her mother died of cancer, Vanessa at her bedside while her boyfriend cheated on her... with her sister... Cutting all ties, she speeds down the road.
And blacks out.
Waking up in the wreckage of her car, a little battered but not seriously injured, she crawls free and tries to get her bearings. Her car hit a tree and turned over. As she clambers to her feet and looks around, she sees ... madness.
Other cars have either crashed or stalled in the road. The people from the cars are being attacked by large, flying, carnivorous, alien creatures. Short furry humanoids stab at them ineffectually with strange metal spears. In one car a child is screaming. His father is being pulled out of the driver side window by one of the flying things. Another one has already carried his mother away...
Beyond the Breach by writer Ed Brisson and artist Damian Couceiro is a reality-smashing bad trip of a story in which the boundaries between the familiar world and the outer dimensions of horror have been literally ripped apart.
Vanessa rescues the boy and also one of the small furry beings. Seeking shelter, it soon becomes apparent that help is not coming any time soon. When she blacked out, so did everyone else in the world. During that interval something catastrophic happened to space and time, causing different realities to collide. All technology has failed to work, making survival even more difficult as bizarre, ferocious beasts stalk the land.
If you have read Stephen King's novella The Mist you will have a good idea of the scenario our heroine finds herself in. Indeed, it is a theme found in many of his works: ordinary people suddenly finding themselves dealing with very extraordinary phenomena. Somehow more disturbing than Alice falling down the rabbit hole or Dorothy getting flung into Oz, Vanessa is still in her own familiar world, but it is a world that has changed in frightening ways, invaded by nightmarish predators and stripped of the comforting conveniences of modern life. With the Armageddon-like setting we cross the genre boundary into horror: people trapped, abandoned, helpless, picked off by savage demons.
There are some brighter moments, however: the Ewok-like Kai is a cute, tough little cookie and wandering stranger Samuel is a surreal wizard riding his gigantic tortoise (called Turtle). Couceiro renders all of the above with a sharp, humorous touch.
Vanessa and her companions begin a journey through this shattered landscape, tackling monsters and the inevitable aggressive human survivors, seeking safety, answers and - for Samuel - hopefully a way home.
But are any of these things still possible? When reality itself is broken, does hope even exist?
Zak Webber
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