VERN

The new custodian of a multiversal research facility must help clean up an interdimensional mess.

Burned out after a fruitless job search, Vern, a young Black man, drives home to Florida from San Francisco, eager to rest. But his grandmother has gotten him a job with her former employer. Quasar Industries researches the multiverse, hoping to find a new home for humanity. As their new custodian, Vern cleans up unexplainable messes, like blue multi-eyed interdimensional goo (“begone, weird eyeball dudes”), while getting lost in rooms that open to different dimensions. In one such room, he finds a strange machine that transports him to the edge of the multiverse when he plugs it in. There he meets the Void, who repeatedly asks him, “What is the point?” Unable to answer, Vern is dispatched to an alternate dimension—the Void promises to recall him for an answer after he’s had a little time to think. However, Vern has unwittingly sparked a catastrophe that could end humanity—and it’s up to him to stop it. This engaging, entertaining story has an intriguing plot and a fairly passive protagonist in Vern. Fortunately, Waiters’ experimental art brings Vern’s adventures to life, playing with form and color to creatively represent his movements through time and space. The story balances topics like climate change, late-stage capitalism, and humanity’s self-sabotaging actions with a hopeful outlook, humorous tone, and a dash of family intrigue.

An imaginative multiversal adventure.