The Hab by Joshua Dysart and David Lapham (Bad Idea)

 

A billionaire (trillionaire?), Tuttle Barrows creates an underground bunker designed to preserve the human race in the face of a multi-generational, worldwide disaster, in this case global thermal nuclear war and populates it with himself, his immediate family, and his closest and most trusted staff. The only problem, besides the extinction of most of the human race, is that something long buried, and attempted to leave buried by Barrows, threatens the entire endeavor.

Long time comics writer Joshua Dysart (Harbinger, Violent Messiahs, The Unknown Soldier) and acclaimed artist David Lapham unite to bring us a tale of caution, not just for the current times, but the looming near future. While the threat of nuclear war has hung over the human species for nearly one hundred years at a this point, with perhaps a brief breather in the 1990s, another comic book story about a post apocalyptic world might seem redundant. The Hab is different though. This is no Walking Dead/The Last of Us retread (see White Sky from Image etc.). While there is the element of a supernatural or extra-natural horror, the entire story is infused with the kind of smart social and political commentary that makes Dysart's work so relevant yet timeless. 

Dysart engages many questions that are important to seemingly never ending state of near human extinction that we have been teetering on for generations. Questions like: how do we survive an extinction level event? Who gets to survive such and event? Are the ultra-rich the only hope for the future of the human race in such a context? Most importantly though, why aren't the super rich doing anything to avoid the apocalypse before it happens instead of simply planning for their own survival of it? 

That's the question at the heart of The Hab. Barrows has enough money to build a multi-billion dollar survival habitat (or "Hab" for short) and does so instead of throwing the power of his money behind solutions to the problems that lead to the apocalypse. It speaks to the utter core of the selfish inhuman greed, powered by a fragile ego that we see all too often in the world today. The burgeoning horror aspects of the story seem to hint at only a reaffirmation of the necessity for such a central, narrative driving question. 

Early on in the series the horror appears to be quite real and based in the earth, literally, as it seems to emanate from the underground passage that Barrow's crew unearthed, but it's effects are psychological as well. Every member of The Hab(itat) is stricken with psychotic visions and fall prey to horrific violence powered by the visions. It's too early to really determine what the 'horror" is, but it is shaping up to be a question that definitely readers will want to further explore and learn about over the next several issues. 

An all around engaging read for fans of intelligent fiction and horror, The Hab is nothing less than expected from an underrated, but powerfully prescient writer like Joshua Dysart. Andy's Long Box gives it 5 stars. 

Bad Idea Comics