The Displaced #1 featured Reviews 

“The Displaced” #1

By | February 16th, 2024
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

A heads up for anyone interested in reading this: skip the official synopsis, or else you’ll have the next issue or two spoiled for you.

Cover by Luca
Casalanguida
Written by Ed Brisson
Art by Luca Casalanguida
Colored by Dee Cunniffe
Lettered by Hassan Ostamne-Elhaou

The city of Oshawa, Ontario has vanished without a trace. Even worse, nobody remembers it or the 170,000 missing residents that disappeared along with it. As the survivors also fall into the forgotten, they must seek each other out, if they hope to have any chance of surviving in a world where no one believes they exist…

“The Displaced” follows five central characters: Emmett, a white man whose ailing father is living in a care home; Gabby, a Black, married mother-of-one; Harold, a mentally ill old man; and Paige, a young woman who enjoys loitering with her unnamed boyfriend. We’re introduced to them slowly and carefully as their paths cross when their hometown of Oshawa, Ontario suddenly vanishes after an apparent earthquake, seeing why they weren’t in the city when it disappeared – paced like a film or TV show, we learn their names and backstories via dialogue as the action unfolds, without caption boxes.

Unsurprisingly, how interesting each character is varies, especially with the limited number of pages in this opening chapter. Gabby is undisputedly the queen of this issue, as we get to meet her husband and daughter during the bitterly amusing explanation for why she was outside Oshawa during its disappearance. In contrast, Emmett is fine, but suffers from us being told, not shown his backstory: it’s understandable that he’s away from home, trying to forget his troubles in another town, and his situation is poignant and relatable, but still pales in impact thanks to his father being off-panel.

Harold, Paige and her boyfriend are certainly the characters whose histories are being saved for later: the two youngsters largely pass in and out of the others’ stories. The old man feels as important as Emmett and Gabby, especially as he’s the first character we meet, and in the most arresting way, stealing a school bus for his own mysterious reasons. We learn that despite (or perhaps because of) his instabilities, Harold knows more about what’s going on than anyone else (although he’s very much still in the dark), winning us over as one of the most engaging protagonists, when he could’ve lingered on as the most exasperating one.

Casalanguida’s minimalistic artwork evokes the great “Lazarus,” “Gotham Central” and “Daredevil” artist Michael Lark, albeit with heavier inking: it might strive for a deeply realistic, cinematic feel, but the characters are still distinct and expressive enough that you’ll never be left wondering who is who. This restrained approach extends to the layouts, which generally consists of widescreen or square panels, making it feel like a live-action movie or TV show, and which makes certain moments — ie. ones in larger panels, splash pages, and chaotic, vertical, upright strips during the “earthquakes” — more impactful.

The shadowy inking, and Cunniffe’s moody coloring, even during scenes set during daytime and in bright interior locations, lends an appropriate sense of encroaching darkness. Ostamne-Elhaou’s lettering is superb as always, from the sheer amount of dialogue he manages to cleanly spread out across every panel, to the way characters’ behavior and emotions are reflected by lowercase letters or distorted speech bubbles (to wit, check out how Gabby’s baby’s cries aren’t a bubble at all), and the striking graffiti-like sound effects that are works of art unto themselves. It’s so easy to take letterers for granted, Ostamne-Elhaou included, because of how many books they do, but they do so much to make a script work.

All in all, “The Displaced” #1 sets up a compelling mystery – I just wish I had known less about it before reading it, because the synopsis reveals how things will get much worse for our leads before they (hopefully!) get better, and reaching the end of this issue left me deflated, knowing how far the series still has to go before it truly begins to explore its topical premise. (Brisson said when the series was announced, “It’s a story about the churn of media, and the victims who quite literally become forgotten as the world moves to the next big story.”)

I can’t help but wonder if it has too many main characters: as James Cameron once said, if something’s too slow, just cut an entire storyline, instead of trying to speed up the pace here and there. Regardless, the comic is a coherent and mature read, its stately pace and measured art and script making it one of the better comics of the week, despite it being something I’ll probably enjoy more in trade paperback. It’s still a strong comic worth recommending, something to continue reading for the next four months, even if it falls short of being a must-read for the time being.

Final Verdict: 7.5 – here’s to the next four issues.


Christopher Chiu-Tabet

Chris was the news manager of Multiversity Comics. A writer from London on the autistic spectrum, he enjoys talking about his favourite films, TV shows, books, music, and games, plus history and religion. He is Lebanese/Chinese, although he can't speak Cantonese or Arabic. He continues to rundown comics news on Ko-fi: give him a visit (and a tip if you like) there.

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