Wish You Were Here

An incredible song from a brilliant album–and only the first thing I want to say about the comic Higher Earth. Slickly produced by BOOM! Studios, this action series began last May, and while making room in my bookcase for the comics piled beneath it, I realized, “This one’s been missing for a while.”

The last issue, by writer Sam Humphries (The Ultimates) and artist Francesco Biagini (Elric: The Balance Lost), came out around November. Most BOOM! titles arrive a bit more regularly; word on the web is that it’s been canceled. This is truly a shame, because it could have been the best of them.

From its rollicking sci-fi core, Higher Earth transports us to planets of garbage, dinosaurs, and conspicuous wealth. It also takes a trope that Marvel and DC have been milking for decades–that of infinite universes, each possessing an Earth–and details the fallout of their interaction. Visually, I’m reminded of Star Wars. The social commentary, Firefly-sharp, is dazzling.

The story opens with a narrative shotgun blast: our hero Rex falls from the sky, along with scrap metal, onto an Earth filled with nothing but. When a mangy scavenger tries to snatch his transport device, Rex nicks the man with his samurai sword. “Hands off, local.”

Then we meet Heidi, who’s piloting a cybernetic grizzly bear held upright with spare parts. She’s a feisty redheaded teen (of course), dressed in rags and dumpster-diving for toys. Rex watches her from afar, unsure how to approach the person he’s been searching for. But someone else watches him.

Artist Biagini, a miraculous designer and choreographer, offers hectic, addictive panels. His rough-and-ready figures grit their teeth with the best by Henry Clayton (Archer & Armstrong) and Brad Walker (Action Comics). His bustling alien locales beg to be explored. Andrew Crossley colors it all with tropical verve.

After fighting off the murderous third wheel, Rex tells Heidi, “They’re going to keep coming for you. They’ll never stop. They’ll kill you. Or, you can come with me instead.” He transports them to the United States, I mean Sunshine Earth 9, where: “Plenty of jobs and affordable dwellings await your arrival. Technology to make you and your family healthy and happy. Here, people of all Earths live together in harmony.”

Sunshine Earth 9 is actually a cramped jungle of exotically-dressed throngs and highrise apartments (on the roofs of which are tent communes). Heidi freaks out and bolts, leaving Rex to chase her down–and fatally carve up anyone who looks cross-eyed at either of them. They end up jetting through a portal run by the Higher Earth Conservation Corps, and land on a world that never had an extinction event. Dinosaurs roam and giant flowers bloom like beanbag chairs.

Unfortunately this world, one of many, is tainted by military subcontractors and the plundering of natural resources. Rex and Heidi also fight yet another assassin, who turns out to be an analogue of Rex–the man himself, but from a different Earth.

As the late, lamented Higher Earth continues, getting weirder and more wonderfully convoluted, we meet an army of sleazy Rex analogues. They protect the Queen–from different versions of herself that might pop up. She, by the way, has the same red hair as Heidi.

How the tale ends is still anyone’s guess. Comics never really vanish forever–and great ideas keep squirming in thwarted creators, no matter which project they’ve moved on to.