Unthinkable

by Mark Sable, Julian Totino Tedesco (Artist), Paul Azaceta (Artist)

They've been hired to think the Unthinkable. But what happens when the unthinkable actually happens? After 9-11, best-selling author Alan Ripley joins a government think tank consisting of the most imaginative minds in diverse fields. Their job? Think of nightmare scenarios and crippling terrorist attacks so the government can safeguard against them. But what happens when the think tank folds, and the attacks start to happen? From Mark Sable and rising talent Julian Totino Tedesco.

Genres: Comics, Mystery, Fiction, Graphic Novels, Conspiracy Theories, Thriller

127 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Mark Sable is a writer for stage, screen, television and comics.

He is most noted as the writer/creator of the comics GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES, GROUNDED, FEARLESS and HAZED for Image Comics and UNTHINKABLE for Boom! Studios.

Mark has worked on WHAT IF? SPIDER-MAN: DARK REIGN for Marvel Comic and SUPERGIRL, TEEN TITANS: COLD CASE, TEEN TITANS SPOTLIGHT: CYBORG and TWO-FACE: YEAR ONE for DC Comics. He has contributed to Image's COMIC BOOK TATTOO, POPGUN and 24/7 anthologies.

He is also the only person ever to work for both Charlie Rose and Howard Stern.

Mark's most recent works include GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES for Image Comics and RIFT RAIDERS, the launch book for Kickstart Comics.

Both UNTHINKABLE and HAZED were optioned as feature films.

Upcoming books include DECOY and BLUE SKY for Kickstart.

Reviews

[47Time · Rating 3 out of 5]

The rugged artwork is a good choice here, but the large cast makes it a bit difficult to follow who is doing what. While the story sounds believable and based on fact, there are moments that seem too much like scripted movie scenes. If it's so easy to destabilize the world, why didn't some bad guy organization do it already? There are plenty who want to. This story takes a shortcut and goes straight to implementing the end of the world. Like in movie world, a small group of individuals is able to prevent it.

The 9/11 attacks prompt the US government to form a think tank of individuals qualified in several fields. One of the members is Alan Ripley, a writer of fiction famous for his action novels based on probable doomsday scenarios. His brother Steven, an ex-Navy Seal, dies during 9/11, so he gladly jpins the think tank. Their goal is to think of impossible scenarios before the terrorists do. The project is closed because of a lack of results. 8 years later some of the scenarios they wrote become true.

Alan gets the think tank back together to try and prevent the rest of their doomsday scenarios from being implemented. Their first stop is Jerusalem where they need to protect the Dome of the Rock from being destroyed in a nuclear bombing which would spark a Jihad. Then onto Switzerland to purposefully destroy the Hadron Collider to prevent the creation of a black hole that can swallow the Earth whole. The Chinese are the last target. The Internet is used to organize a country-wide protest that only the hacker in Alan's group can stop.

One more scenario, not a doomsday one, but still very destructive, is carried out through the Internet in an operation led by Steven who is revealed to be still alive. His intention was to implement the scenarios created by the think tank so the US would become the only superpower in the world. All the other countries would destroy themselves and each other in all manner of attacks, from financial, to biological, to nuclear. Alan proves that he is strong enough to stop his brother's plans in a rather rushed ending. He is worried that, even though the danger is averted right now, other think tanks are working on creating new doomsday scenarios.

[Devon Munn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one had quite an interesting premise and the story was fun to follow even if it was a little hard for me to follow and it could get very info-dumpy at times

[Art · Rating 2 out of 5]

It felt rushed the whole way through. It was like a Hollywood action film, and not in a good way.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of fun, but a little too complicated. A secret government office hires a handful of cranks to dream up doomsday scenarios. It’s a cool idea, it’s probably been done. The scenarios start actually occurring and the prognosticating protagonist is drawn into stopping them. Then things get crazy. His Navy SEAL brother is dead, but maybe not. The mercenary outfit he started might be on the wrong side. The hero’s father might be a villain. Everyone else in the world might also be a villain. There are a few too many twists and the story gets blurry.

[Artur Coelho · Rating 3 out of 5]

Imaginem um grupo de discussão muito especial, com especialistas em diferentes áreas que têm em comum a capacidade de imaginar o pior dentro dos seus campos. Juntos, têm como missão imaginar cenários impensáveis, onde as mais improváveis combinações de tecnologias e tendências se combinam em possibilidades ameaçadoras. Um romancista, uma microbióloga, um advogado, um hacker, um ambientalista, um cientista nuclear e um líder religioso apocalíptico são recrutados por uma organização obscura com possíveis laços governamentais para criar cenários implausíveis de terrorismo global. Anos depois, os cenários imaginados começam a acontecer. Resta aos sobreviventes do grupo de discussão descobrir quem está por detrás de uma sequência de ataques terroristas improváveis que coloca o mundo à beira de uma guerra nuclear.

Escrito à sombra dos atentados do 11 de setembro, Unthinkable parte de premissas muito interessantes: ciência de limites, cenários sociais improváveis, pulsões para guerras e possibilidades de criação de cortinas de fumo para despertar suspeições e ocultar as acções dos responsáveis reais. Infelizmente o desenrolar da história fica-se por uma espécie de sequências inverosímeis de acção onde os heróis incompreendidos percorrem o globo para tentar evitar novas fases dos cenários impensáveis e descobrir quem realmente está a puxar os cordelinhos de uma conspiração que implica atentados de bioterrorismo, invasões americano-israelitas do Irão, destruição das reservas petrolíferas mundiais e erosão das superpotências através de uma guerra nuclear entre a China e a Rússia, bem como a resolução do problema demográfico do subcontinente indiano através de uma troca de ogivas atómicas entre Nova Delhi e Islamabad. Tudo orquestrado por um supremacista branco em conluio com políticos e generais anti-corrupção e ambientalistas preocupados com a degradação do ambiente, graças a uma rede social.

Partindo de uma ideia brilhante Unthinkable descarrila em peripécias mal amanhadas. Para as histórias do comic ficam os dissabores do argumentista Mark Sable ao ser apanhado em aeroportos com o argumento, que provocou suspeitas da parte dos notoriamente zelosos agentes da segurança nos transportes aéreos americanos. Aparentemente, as ideias impensáveis são hoje tão plausíveis que causam desconfiança nos agentes de segurança. Sinal dos tempos complexos em que vivemos.

[John Wiswell · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise has been done so many times that even TV shows have used it (most recently on Psych): a panel of experts are gathered, used to create theories on how something bad might happen, and then the people behind the panel ironically use the theories. Mark Sable's "Unthinkable" could be excruciating, but thanks to his disturbing imagination, Julian Tedesco's visual style, and the topic, the book becomes morbidly fascinating.

The topic? Terrorism post-9/11. Our panel unwittingly writes our terrorists a book of ideas on how to destroy America. We're not merely talking about new key locations to bomb, but disrupting oil trade to start new wars and epidemics originating in botox injections. Because it's so horrible, it's easy to get engrossed for the five-chapter story, waiting to see what other nightmares the experts thought up, and hoping some can be avoided. Because TV media so conditioned us to expect biowarfare, dirty bombs and mall shootings only for none of them to happen, the book blooms into a disaster movie-like fantasy, part Horror and part political thriller. It then relies on the strength of its disasters, which bob between terrifying and ridiculous. There's high tech plotting, and then there's a telepathy machine telling millions of people to jump at the same time.

When it works, it does because the book is so tight. At barely over 100 pages, Sable and company were forced to stay lean, glossing over typical political thriller romances and grudges (they're there, we know how they always go, so we get a couple of panels or pages of cues embedded within the plot). The brevity also inclines Sable to cliches - the hacker is fat, the religious guy is a bigoted nut, and there's only one token female expert. But in telling such a quick story, cliches are useful, and since Sable doesn't dwell on them as though they're profound or original, they're forgivable as tropes in a thriller. When its twists work, nothing else matters.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

While 4 stars might feel a little high for this trade, author Mark Sable crafts a credible thriller that adds the tech back into techno-thriller. Hollywood writer and novelist Alan Ripley is hired to join the government's think tank after 9/11. Along with a biologist, a preacher/end-times writer, a lawyer, a nuclear scientist, a hacker, and a conspiracy theory expert they are to dream up the worse things they can imagine so the government can plan to stop them.

Eight years later Ripley is suffering from a huge case of writer's block when the scenarios that he and his fellow think tank comrades dreamed up start to happen. He re-teams with think tank to try to prevent more of their unthinkable scenarios from happening.

Most of the story is plausible, and a half way decent explanation is given for how Ripley can pull of the action scenes. It is easy to see why the movie studios have already snapped this property up.

[Blake · Rating 1 out of 5]

An otherwise intriguing premise is fettered by its dollar-store clearinghouse of Democratic American talking points. Characters are leaden, improbable, pointless. Plot jumps around like an overstressed grasshopper. Art style is nice.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great art with a decent contingency conspiracy story.