Three Worlds/Three Moons: Foundations #1 Review – A Bold New Universe
Three Worlds/Three Moons, the line of books that originated from the minds of Jonathan Hickman, Mike Huddleston, and Mike Del Mundo (and now joined by Nick Spencer) is maybe, to my eye, the most interesting project to come out of the American comics sphere in the 2020s. In one of the earliest posts back in 2021, Hickman had a fascinating description for it.
“THREE WORLDS/THREE MOONS is a concept universe. And we mean this in exactly the same vein as a concept album, where all of the individual characters/stories/things we create together add up to be part a much larger whole.”
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It exists out of some of Hickman’s frustrations with the industry, specifically the solicits system and how stories are told in the direct market. And then on top of that, it’s also, as he described, akin to riffing, where you just jam out together like in a band and just work on something.
I got a free week a while back, and then I got a subscription for a month to catch up, before deciding to wait again because I’d just rather read it all physically. But in that time, I basically went through every piece of the substack, read everything – comics, interviews, documents, all of it. I had a lot of thoughts, and to not bury the lede, all good ones.
Anyone who knows me, knows how much I love Hickman’s work. I obsess over all of it, I love going through them page by page, over and over and over again to find something new from it, to study it, to talk about it. Three Worlds/Three Moons fascinated me for a long time, but I never really got into it until recently, which is when I really understood the whole deal.
Truth be told, the whole deal is something that under usual circumstances, bothers me. Building out the world and all the mechanisms before the story feels like going a little too far ahead – sure, you might be mapping the place out, but is there a point to map it out without even knowing it first? That being said, the promise was that all of this was in service of the story, and I trust this team, so I followed their lead.
And it worked out in a really cool way.
The first of the three stories in this, Fable, was the first ever comic they published, all the way back on August 24, 2021. The second, Ruins, isn’t the second comic they published, but it is the direct follow up to the former, published on January 31st, 2022. And finally, Breathe, the third, is what follows from there, and the precursor to the weekly Academy by the team and Steve Epting.
What I loved about going through the substack back then and reading everything, was seeing the promise they talked about, and watching this book slowly grow. Looking at those posts on how the systems function, or all the bits of concept art and lore, and then seeing comics afterwards that played with those ideas (which became more fun with Legends, the series where other collaborators came in to play in the space) was the big draw for me. It might not be for everyone, but rarely, if ever, do we get to see the building blocks of an universe before we see the actual universe.
It’s ambitious as hell. It could always fall apart, it could always just feel like wiki nonsense instead of a story, but every comic that came out of it fulfilled that promise, filled with interesting ideas that always made me look forward to more. There’s so much going on here.
Granted, if you’re reading this through the Three Worlds/Three Moons: Foundations #1 published by Dark Horse as of today, then you didn’t get that experience. You’re just getting the comics straight up. Of course, that begs the question, “Does it hold up?”
I think so.
There’s a lot of familiar Hickman-isms in all this, in fact, the first story, Fables, almost feels like a page out of Fantastic Four, with the conversation between Tajo Vallar (the protagonist) and his son, Phil, feeling akin to the likes of a conversation between Reed and Franklin. From there, Ruins and Breathe are all within the ideas of the ‘great man’, of doom to come, and the fates of everyone. It’s all really cool, and the reason why it all works is because of the stunning presentation alongside it. Fables is illustrated by Mike Huddleston, Ruins by both Huddleston & Mike Del Mundo, and then Breathe by Jerome Opeña and Matt Hollingsworth, with letters by Rus Wooton.
It’s the designs that draw me so deep into everything. It all feels almost Kirby-ian in terms of philosophy, with gorgeous gorgeous art that gives these creatures and characters and flora and fauna so much life, leaving them so alluring and thus the reader inquisitive about what they could be. And then there’s Sasha E. Head’s book design, which we get a little taste of here (the data pages being in English and Kreska Kaoso, one of the languages in this universe, is a great touch), but truly soar in the big books like Systems and Maps.
For me though, I do think something is missing through experiencing this experiment in this way. I’m glad it’s finally available to more people outside of the subscribers, but I think it’s so integral to go and read and look at the process documented on the substack. It adds a lot of texture to the whole thing, and that’s what made me appreciate everything a lot more, but it’s not for everyone, so I get it.
That being said, this was the first taste of the universe by design, and if you’re into good sci-fi shit, this is good sci-fi shit. Go check out Three Worlds/Three Moons: Foundations.
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