Trade Rating: INTO THE UNBEING posits that god might hate you

Into the Unbeing

Writer: Zac Thompson
Artist:  Hayden Sherman
Letterer: Jim Campbell
Publisher: Dark Horse
Collects: Into the Unbeing Part 1 #1-4, Into the Unbeing Part 2 #1-4
Publication Date: January 2025, and Part 2 October 2025

Every few months we hear another weather report that says something along the lines of “unseasonably hot/cold” or “once in a lifetime…” to refer to a major storm. Hurricane Helene passed through western North Carolina last year, causing record flooding, rainfall, and mass power outages for weeks. After the storm, when recovery operations began, everyone was roughly on the same page. “That was an awful, once in a generation storm, but we better prepare for it to happen again soon…”

The ravages of climate change and environmental catastrophes that we endure on a daily basis are enough to fill a person with rage: sometimes passionate for change and other times just lost in the intensity of feeling with nothing to do. But as each new record high summer or record low winter hits us, one begins to wonder if the destructive forces of nature are just a defense mechanism, a way for the planet to resist and pay back to us the ongoing damage we’ve done to it. Like the world is not only alive, but it’s also pissed, and we’re just another invasive species trying to bring the whole house down.

Into the Unbeing follows a group of environmental scientists in the near future of 2034 as they try to document the discovery of a mysterious landform. The group, far from a well oiled machine, immediately sees what’s so strange about this particular mission. This isn’t just a mountain or a cave system, but rather something almost cosmically horrific, something that might actually be alive! Zac Thompson’s latest is a blend of The Descent and Prometheus, taking the former’s harrowing journey into a cave system as a way to explore the specific anxieties of its characters and combining it with the latter’s existential and theological questions about humanity at large. Like Prometheus, this isn’t so much a story about whether or not god exists or whether or not we have a purpose in the universe. It’s more blunt than that. This is a story about how not only does a godly being exist, but that being might hate all that you are and all that you’ve been allowed to do.

The series is so far comprised of two parts, with each part made up of four issues. Each issue is also told from a different perspective, usually one of the scientific crew that we follow along their journey. As we go further down the rabbit hole of this landform/sentient being, each shift in perspective reignites the horror and larger than life questions at the heart of the series: Are we to blame for what’s happened to the world? What’s the point of all this? Are we trying to understand the world around us or is the world trying to understand and toy with us? 

These characters are not prepared for what they are experiencing, with each issue following a similar formula of getting your bearings before something more bizarre or horrific happens. In that way, the shifts in perspective are a way for Thompson to essentially repeat this narrative beat over and over again, through different periods of time and reinforce for the reader the inevitable consequences of our relationship to the planet. Every new issue is the same horror, just through different eyes. And yet, there is a certain level of beauty to it all, a conflict between the unruly and ugly layers of human history that run into the majesty of an ecosystem unlike anything we’ve ever seen.

Hayden Sherman’s art conveys these tensions in layouts that resemble human anatomy. Pages laid out like rib cages, the brain, the digestive system, etc. In this way, Into the Unbeing allows the reader to literally see the humanity of the world around them as the characters inside struggle to admit it to themselves. The series becomes less a mystery and more a sci-fi allegory for our relationship to the planet. The world is mysterious and terrifying, and we are tiny in comparison. Yet the damage we do and our sense of importance renders us just as dangerous as the environment itself. For every little bit of wonder or awe we might feel looking at the page as a whole, our focus is pulled back to the heart of something tragic and horrific as it unfolds. 

Noticeably, the art of the series is not fully formed to communicate these ideas from the start. Sherman improves on the character designs, their expressions and the complexity of the layouts with each issue. However, the color is excellent from the start, mixing warm reds and yellows with greens and blacks to give the world a sickly appearance, like we’re not only inside something alive but something that is clearly dying. The characters are thus framed like parasites, moving between the body as alien forces as the larger entity gets sicker, scarier and a bit gross.

Ultimately this is a series about perspective, both in how the narrative jumps around but also in how the art frames the story. The belly of the beast is as much the narrator as the scientists as they move through a system they don’t have much control over or choice in. And while the questions emerge over who the real threat is, the story maintains enough ambiguity and distance that there’s no easy answer. 

Into the Unbeing is a great read, with incredible art. Thompson’s script gives us likeable characters with emotionally resonant motivations, while Hayden Sherman’s makes the most out of every bodily horror and every surreal element of the premise. The collective eight issues paint a bleak picture of our relationship to the earth, but the series never loses the adventurous fun and heightened sci-fi elements that make it an engaging read.

Into the Unbeing Part 1 and Part 2 are available now

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