Cyberpunk horror thriller w0rldtr33 has finished up its first run with a superb #5 that both raised the series' stakes and changed the nature of the story being told. The issue, by series creators James Tynion IV, Fernando Blanco, and Jordie Bellaire, also hinted at several slightly unexpected - but entirely fitting - influences. Spoilers ahead.
A short recap, in case you've not been keeping up. w0rldtr33 #1 opens with a brutal mass-murder broadcast live over the internet. The atrocity is committed by a teenager named Gibson Lane. He's arrested, but older brother Ellison arrives at the police station just in time to see Gibson assassinated by a glassy-eyed, entirely naked woman. This is just the first of a series of killings that start to take place around the country, with the woman - Sammi, as we come to know her, though that's not really her name anymore - a regular, deadly presence.
Elsewhere, a shady tech guru named Gabriel Winter is reuniting a group of hackers and coders with knowledge of the Undernet - a malevolent "sub-basement" of the internet that intends to bring about the end of the world. This group (who used the web forum from which the comic derives its hard-to-type name) fought and contained the Undernet before, but its back and more powerful than ever.
Now, in #5, we see the beginning of the end.
In a flashforward to 2049 we find the world in ruins. Civilisation has fallen. The Undernet has won, and Ellison seems to be one of only a few survivors. The images of a derelict city inevitably recall the machine-ruled possible futures of The Terminator and its sequels, all crumbling cityscapes, burnt out cars and prowling killers - albeit this time naked giants, rather than silver skeletal cyborgs.
Slightl
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