Review – Assorted Crisis Events #1 (Image Comics)

March 13, 2025

3–4 minutes

Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Deniz Camp
Artist: Eric Zawadzki
Colourist: Jordie Bellaire
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Release Date: 12th March 2025

On sale this week with a tsunami of hype behind it, Assorted Crisis Events takes us to a version of the world where time is having a bit of a… crisis. Different timelines, eras and multiversal phenomena are all bleeding into the ‘real world’, and this new anthology series features collection of one-shot stories examining the lives of some of the people feeling the effects of this bold new world. Pleasingly though, rather than going down the traditional anthology route of shorter, snappier stories, this first chapter focuses all of its 44 pages on just one single person.

Meet Ashley, a young lady trying her best to get by in a world turned upside down, casually checking her phone for ‘Atypical Temporal Phenomenon’ alerts as she goes about her day-to-day business. To make things a little more confusing, the neighborhood outside Ashley’s house is used almost continually as a set for low-budget post-apocalyptic movies, meaning that she frequently finds herself waking up to things like Nazi parades and ravenous gangs of murderous cannibals, a situation which only further warps her sense of what’s real and what isn’t. And that’s essentially what this first issue is all about – an increasingly fractured young woman trying desperately to keep her grip on reality in a world where absolutely nothing is certain. And it’s absolutely brilliant.

Given the expanded page count, series writer Deniz Camp is given all the time he needs to have things gradually unravel for Ashley. Starting with the breaking of a clock – itself something of an outdated antique given the aforementioned timey-wimey shenanigans, but in Ashley’s case the only tangible link to her deceased parents – she becomes more and more desperate and more and more frantic to get it fixed. The toll of living in such uncertain times continues to grind her down, and the lack of any clear grip on the passage of time makes for a disorienting way of life, to say the least.

I’ve been an enthusiastic fan of Eric Zawadski’s for over eight years now, ever since I first saw his stunning knack for creative sequential storytelling in the pages of Black Mask’s The Dregs. Given the premise of this story, it’s safe to say that Zawadski is being given an absolutely mouthwatering sandbox to play in, but rather than focusing on the fantastical and unexpected, he meticulously zones in on Ashley and her day-to-day life, leaving the caveman, knights and flying cars as little more than innocuous background details. It’s this approach that really makes this series stand out, and I absolutely love the way the world has simply come to accept these ‘temporal events’ as the new status quo, making the extraordinary seem almost mundane as beleaguered pedestrians find themselves passing futuristic robots and dinosaurs during their morning commute.

Rounding out the visual side of this first issue is the absolutely A-tier colouring/lettering combo of Jordie Bellaire and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou. The former does a fantastic job of ensuring Ashley is front and centre throughout the story, shading all the other details into the background and helping to add depth and emotion to the ebbing and flowing storyline. The latter is, simply put, the perfect letterer for a book like this, taking the reader by the hand and leading (and in some cases dragging) them around Zawadski’s frequently panel-heavy pages and underscoring the frantic change of tone as Ashley’s sanity continues to unravel.

The story gradually spirals downwards for Ashley, probing into darker and darker themes before exploding with a sense-shattering climax. I know it’s early days, but this is easily the best comic I’ve read so far this year and should already be in automatic contention for a lot of people’s ‘Best of 2025’ year-end lists. An absolute triumph of both ambition and execution, with a four-person creative team working in total lockstep, you simply have to find the time to check this one out.

Rating: 5/5.

[PREVIEW ARTWORK – CLICK TO ENLARGE]