Nowhere Men #3

Written by Eric Stephenson
Art by Nate Bellegarde

Three issues in, I still have no idea where Eric Stephenson is going with Nowhere Men, his 'scientists are the new rock stars' series at Image.  On the surface, this book is supposed to be about World Corp., a company founded by four rock-star famous scientists in the 60s, but the reality is that they are barely in the book.

Instead, much of the focus is on a group of scientists who were living on a space station funded by World Corp.  They contracted some kind of inexplicable virus, and the company decided to simply wash its hands of them and leave them in orbit.  One of them built a teleporter though, and most of the crew stepped through last issue.

Now, they've appeared in different places on the Earth, and their disease seems to have changed some of them quite a bit.  A couple of them, stranded in the far North, do not feel any effects from the cold, while another, who looked like a giant scabbing pustule when we last saw him, now appears more like a bright red comic book strong man à la The Thing.  That guy somehow gets into a conflict with a group of Mad Max style hippies, which really makes no sense to me, but there it is.

I find that the randomness of this book makes it pretty appealing.  The four central scientists, of whom only two show up this month, are all characters straight out of a Warren Ellis comic, while the other characters feel more grounded, despite being involved in some pretty crazy situations.  I feel like this book could run the risk of never completely gelling in terms of its disparate story elements, but for now, I'm curious enough to keep buying it, especially since Nate Bellegarde's art looks so good.