Cruel Universe 2 wraps up its twelve-issue run this week, and the creatives supplying the stories couldn’t be better. Comics legend Ann Nocenti, Melissa Flores, and Greg Smallwood offer up three tales of horror spanning cyborg complications, pollution, and alien technology. With art by Daniel Gete, Jordi Tarragona, and Smallwood, it’s one of the best-looking issues in the series as well!
Kicking things off is Nocenti and Gete’s “An Hour in the Life of Lila.” Right off the bat, you’ll notice Gete’s highly detailed art style reminiscent of Frank Quitely. A dynamic full-page splash of a close-up of a girl under surgery opens the story as mechanical hands pull out her eyeball. We then see her father worried sick, with some kind of spaceships putting out fires on a mountain in the distance. The future isn’t great, although the technology certainly is.
Nocenti smartly tugs at the ramifications of using technology to replace the girls’ parts via two doctors, one of whom is concerned about forcing this tech on her, and the other, overly certain it’ll all work out. The idea that mechanical parts will make her whole again but communicate separately is explored, and her human mind’s attempt to make sense of these voices leads to a dangerous outcome. Not only does this story pluck at the issue of lack of consent, but it also addresses the dangers of cyborg technology, helping make sense of all the noise.
Next up is “Carbon Credit” by Flores and Tarragona, a story about a woman who analyzes data to ensure environmental regulations are implemented. We open on her daughter in a dirty-looking soccer field before we see our main character in court, defending her data, even though people are getting sick in zones that are considered healthy. Once she learns her own daughter is sick, however, she realizes the fudged numbers to save corporations’ money have made her daughter violently ill. This leads to desperation and forcibly changing the results to get her daughter help, and it’s an all too familiar situation these days when folks are against things like abortion or gay rights, until it affects them. It’s a story that’s almost too real, making the horror more frightening.
Wrapping up this three-issue anthology is Greg Smallwood in “Terror-Form!” Told in an old-school EC Comics style, Smallwood uses lengthy captions and dialogue word balloons to create an old-school comic feel. His art is as impeccable as ever, with a glossy sheen that suits the ’50s-era setting.
The story is about a corporation about to launch a rocket to explore the stars, but the technology is far more advanced than the rocket is capable of. Eventually, learn where that technology came from, but before that, Smallwood focuses on a few of the mission scientists who know the truth but are too afraid to leak the truth, even if it could mean many will die. Pulpy aliens, screaming news reporters straight from the Jetsons, and utter catastrophe await!
Cruel Universe 2 #12 serves as a fitting finale for the anthology’s second volume, showcasing the strengths that have made the revival such a success. Nocenti delivers cerebral body horror, Flores taps into contemporary fears with devastating effectiveness, and Smallwood closes the issue with a loving homage to classic EC storytelling. The result is a collection of stories that are frightening, thoughtful, and visually spectacular. If horror comics are at their best when they hold a mirror up to society’s fears and failings, Cruel Universe 2 ends its run with a reflection that’s difficult to look away from.
