Review by Ian Keogh

The person seen emerging bloodied from a cornfield in the sample art is Aleph Null, who’s submitted themselves to implant experimentation to such an extent the corporation responsible considers them property. They’ve escaped, and are being tracked. Aleph believes there’s a city of refuge, a place called Laurelwood that was once on every map, and was then no longer identified.

Christopher Sebela doesn’t prolong the journey, and by the first chapter’s end Aleph has spent a night in Laurelwood. It’s a fascinating place for seeming to be a normal American town, but actually designated for testing the future. Knowing that doesn’t make Aleph’s life any easier in the first instance, as not only is Laurelwood patrolled by security troops, their own mental state is in uncertain flux.

Sebela has a lot of valid ideas about where things are going, starting with the use of non-disclosure agreements, leading to Test being densely packed, with some matters initially unknowable and filled in via flashbacks. Dry run testing of technology is a two-edged sword, the benefits of what are referred to as baubles accompanied by trespassing nanites.

It’s all the more sinister for being presented as intrusions in what’s otherwise a well defined recognisable world by Jen Hickman until the point things become weird. Really horrific stuff has happened to create the future, and the matter of fact way it’s drawn underlines the outrage. When the weirdness manifests Hickman’s methods work equally well. Although there’s detail and this is a populated world the illustration values simplicity, which is just as well with everything Sebela has brewing.

He may be delivering a complex metaphor about the difficulties of life in the present, about how we’re all running on a treadmill never quite being able to catch up, nor completely understanding the bigger picture. Then again, maybe that’s not the object. At face value Test is a continually evolving exploration of existential angst. The opening four chapters build a picture then superseded by the wipe performed in the final chapter, which is smart. By then everything should have fallen into place to make sense. Test is ambitious, intelligent, captivating if you persist and like nothing else you’ve read in comics.