Assorted Crisis Events has been exciting from both a form and function sort of way. The anthology features one-shot style stories with vividly real main characters, but it’s how Deniz Camp and Eric Zawadzki play with your expectations in visually telling the story on the page. In the last issue, we saw blood slowly seeping across the gutters, and in Assorted Crisis Events #3 out this week, we get a mirroring going on to help convey how different and similar the two groups of people are.
Issue #3 feels heavy, especially in a day and age where immigration is in the news across the globe. The story opens in two nearly identical towns, both called Hearth. Located in adjacent parallel dimensions, the people are incredibly similar, save for one with a bit more global climate crisis than the other. Soon, Hearth-Two must flee their world through a portal in a doorway, and they seek refuge from Hearth-One. From here, things get hard, and with time and difficulty, we see how even good people can turn to dark thoughts and even darker actions.
Camp is kind of doing an experiment here, showing readers how the 788 people in each town can diverge due to extreme stress and forced perspectives. To help convey the change between them, Zawadzki implores identical layouts with ever-so-slight changes early on, but by the end, the identical layouts show how far the people of these worlds have changed.
One of the only pages where both towns are on the same page.
Credit: Image
One neat trick employed is a differing perspective when you turn the page. In one scene, we see a man angry that a copy of his wife from Hearth-Two has fallen in love with his neighbor. He knows she’s not the same woman as his wife, but he can’t help but be jealous. You then turn the page, and you see the perspective of the Hearth-Two woman, who is in great pain. He saw her as giddy with lust when, in reality, she was shuddering with pain and loss. It’s a reminder that we never really know what others are going through, and having the empathy and care to know we may not know is key.
As the story progresses, things go from bad to worse. Children turning tricks, a murder, and other dark turns take place. Sometimes these turns feel a little much in such a short time, but this is a dramatic story after all. It’s a strong moral story that I think everyone today should read, simply to be reminded of the hardships others are facing, and how we need a little grace to be better.
Assorted Crisis Events #3 delivers an emotionally resonant and visually daring tale that uses parallel worlds to reflect on the fragility of compassion in times of crisis. While its descent into darkness may feel abrupt, the creative storytelling and moral clarity make this an essential read—one that urges us to look closer, question our assumptions, and choose empathy.
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