Written by Jim Starlin – Art by Bernie Wrightson – Colored by Bill Wray – Lettered by John Costanza

Back in 1988, Jim Starlin and Bernie Wrightson collaborated on a comic for DC that was, appropriately enough… weird. The series was called The Weird, and for decades it has stuck with me and lived somewhere near the forefront of my brain. It’s a strange book.

it’s a cosmic mystery. A horror comic hiding inside a superhero story. And underneath all of that, a surprisingly human story about grief and understanding.

So with all of those threads connecting in this DC Comics limited series, let’s talk about the first issue.

A Mystery Appears

Issue #1 begins with something that looks like a mystery.

A strange crystalline man, later identified as Jason, is communicating with someone, or something, from another dimension. We never see the other side of the conversation, but we quickly realize that they are attempting to construct some sort of bridge between worlds.

Then something unexpected happens. An entity made entirely of light breaks through the dimensional gateway and escapes into the night. Almost immediately, several superheroes detect the anomaly. The glowing presence resembles something like a living aurora borealis streaking across the sky.

They quickly discover two things.

It is incredibly powerful.

And potentially very dangerous.

Panic Below

Meanwhile, the entity’s arrival causes a massive blackout across the city, functioning almost like a giant EMP. Down on the street, people panic. And truly feel fear. Because in this world of superheroes blackouts mean alien invasions or war between powerful beings. And where gods clash, everyone on the street feels like they are just collateral damage.

And here Starlin and Wrightson give us brief glimpses of that fear: confused crowds, worried families, people trying to make sense of something completely beyond their understanding. High above the crowd, the heroes are focused on containing the glowing entity. But they barely acknowledge the psychological chaos unfolding below.

It’s a small moment, but an important one.

Because it reminds us that a superhero battle isn’t just spectacle.

For the people living underneath it, it’s terrifying.

The Funeral

The entity itself behaves in strange ways.

At one point it splits into two streams of energy. One dives into a university computer system, apparently gathering information. The other enters a funeral home. There, it silently observes a funeral service. A widow and her young son mourn a man named Walter Langley, who has been killed in a mugging.

Then the light flashes.The entity — and the corpse in the coffin — vanish.

When Martian Manhunter investigates, he eventually leaves without explanation, abandoning the grieving family to wonder what just happened. It’s a haunting moment. The heroes are trying to save the world. But for this family, the world has already ended.

Wrightson’s Horror

Eventually the streams of energy return to the dimensional gateway where the story began. That’s when Batman realizes what the entity is doing.

It’s building a body.

And this is where Wrightson’s influence becomes unmistakable. Wrightson had built his reputation on horror comics like Swamp Thing, and on his haunting illustrations for Frankenstein. Those sensibilities show up in full force here.

The process unfolds slowly. It starts on a molecular level at first, then a skeleton appears, floating in midair. Then organs begin forming around it. Muscle stretches across bone. Skin seals the body together. It’s an extraordinary display of cosmic precision and body horror.

It makes the entire act deeply unsettling. What should be a moment of creation feels more like watching Frankenstein’s creature assemble itself in the sky. Even the Justice League seems disturbed by what they’re witnessing.

A Being Called The Weird

Once the body is complete, the being awakens long enough to remark that birth is exhausting… and promptly passes out. Which gives the heroes time to examine him.

The results are alarming.

The body is unstable. Organs are still forming. Molecular structures are incomplete. Worse, the being contains so much energy that he could potentially explode with the force of an atomic bomb. Naturally, the heroes decide they should contain him somewhere they can study him. And, naturally, this leads to a fight.

The newly formed being — whom Blue Beetle jokingly names The Weird — easily defeats several of Earth’s most powerful heroes before escaping. But the Weird isn’t acting randomly. He has a mission. He believes other entities from his dimension are coming, and that their arrival would mean enslavement or destruction for humanity.

Borrowed Humanity

There is another complication.

The body the Weird constructed belonged to Walter Langley. The man whose funeral he interrupted earlier. Fragments of Walter’s memories remain inside the body. Those memories begin pulling the Weird toward Walter’s family, particularly his son Billy.

For a being who has only just discovered flesh and blood, the Weird seems surprisingly human. He has curiosity. Humor. Even a little bit of arrogance. We find out that some of that may belong to him.

But some of it may belong to Walter.

Power and Fear

By the end of the issue, one theme begins to emerge clearly.

Power creates uncertainty and fear.

The people in the streets fear the blackout because they don’t understand the power that caused it. The Justice League fears the Weird because they don’t understand his power. The Langley’s fear the power that took Walter’s corpse because they don’t know why. And even the Weird fears the beings from his own dimension because while he knows exactly how powerful they are, he doesn’t know what they will do with humanity when they arrive.

Everyone in the story is reacting to power that they can’t control.

The civilians fear the heroes.

The heroes fear the Weird.

The Langley family fear the violation that unknown power had done to them.

And the Weird fears what might be coming next.

What makes the story interesting is that no one is entirely wrong.

Because power without understanding is terrifying.

Issue #1 of The Weird isn’t really about a battle. It’s about what happens when something unimaginably powerful enters a world that isn’t prepared to understand it. And how quickly fear fills the space where explanation should be.

The Weird – Entry #1