What’s the Furthest Place From Here? vol. 5: A People’s History of the World

After three volumes the biggest mystery in this series is about to be answered:  Why were some issues left out from the previous collections?  It turns out that the issues in question were side stories that were written by series creators Matthew Rosenberg and Tyler Boss that weren’t illustrated by Boss.  Instead we have Joshua Hixon, Ricardo Lopez Ortiz, Sweeny Boo, and Dylan Burnett drawing different stories that take place before and during the main narrative.  Did you ever wonder what it was like when the world of adults fell?  Or how the Academy came to be?  What about what happened to the first Sidney?  Then there’s the most pressing matter of them all:  Is there room for captains in this strange new world?

If nothing else, vol. 4 makes it clear that Rosenberg and Boss have put a lot of thought into this world they’ve created and appear to have only scratched the surface of its weirdness in the main story.  The stories told here are an unlikely mix of weird, funny, heartfelt, and horrifying that manage to hang together even if they tend to work better as conveyors of backstory than as proper ones in their own right.  Still, all of the artists involved deliver quality work that fit the strange stories they’ve been asked to illustrate.  I also think this volume may even come off better following a re-read of the series, which will likely be coming soon (I hope) whenever Rosenberg and Boss deliver the fifth and final (I think) volume of the series.