Review by Karl Verhoven

In 2001 Earth has been occupied by an alien race since 1969. The Sepsis are merciless and beyond the power of humanity to overthrow. However, there are also older, different beings, and Baroness Yelena Desilva is one of them, but she’s been hibernating since before the Sepsis arrived.

With Michael Carroll’s sparkling 2000AD track record, the idea of his new series is certainly something to anticipate, and beginning with the disinterring of the Baroness, or unearthing as the title has it, he sets up the new world efficiently. “The boffins reckon the Sepsis can turn any organic matter into food, or fuel”, it’s explained, and it’s shown that the Baroness has little to fear when it comes to the armed human agents the Sepsis use. Although never identified as such, a lack of labels being a series characteristic, she’s a vampire in all but name, avoiding sunlight, exceptionally strong and exceptionally savage, able to turn invisible and sprouting bat wings at will.

That’s shown extremely well by Joe Currie, who’s one hell of artistic discovery. His pages are to drool over already, and imagining how he’ll develop is mindboggling. There’s barely a weakness. It’s frequently the case that an artist who loves the technological detail is perhaps not as efficient when it comes to movement, but that doesn’t affect Currie, who also has a delicately thin line, while his storytelling is clear and the designs phenomenal. His people are stylised, but they’re consistent throughout, and a nice touch is how the appearance of the Baroness changes according to circumstances.

While the Sepsis are frequently mentioned, Carroll’s aware the power a good entrance has, so it’s a fair way into the story before they’re seen, and in the meantime we’ve come to realise the Baroness may have the arrogance of the super strong, but there’s compassion in the mix.

Two stories are provided, but they have the feeling of appetisers. The first has an invincible threat able to give humanity hope for the first time in decades, while the second moves on to show perhaps that threat can be dealt with. Unearthed establishes a gruesome situation exceptionally well, not least by the unusual addition of a vampire to what’s otherwise a SF action thriller, which gives this project the feel of a European graphic novel rather than a standard 2000AD feature. It makes this world worth discovering.