W0RLDTR33 Vol. 1 Drops Today!

Plus: Fernando Blanco graces us with the official unoffical playlist, and merch you may have missed.

Hola Onion fans,
Jazzlyn Stone here. I’m hijacking the substack to remind you that Vol. 1 of W0rldtrad33 is now available at your local comic shop and wherever cool comics are sold.  As a special treat, Fernando Blanco created the official, unofficial W0rldtr33 playlist.

And now, a word from W0rldtr33 co-creator and artist, Fernando…

NIN. Further Down The Spiral. To me, it all starts here. 

At the beginning of the project I was reading a document by James called 'W0rldtr33 Guide Style' full of movies, books and all kinds of references for the book and dissertations about the ideology behind the story and which was the aims of our book. And one of those references of that list, the only one that wasn't a book, movie, or comic, was that NIN album. I was absolutely delighted by how much all those references and ideology about W0rldtr33 matched exactly with mine, but in some way, my mind got stuck on this NIN album. 

Going further down the spiral...

I was in my twenties in the 90's and despite not being very much the goth type, I shared a studio with Jesús Saiz and hung out a lot with all their goth friends and finally I ended up buying the more industrial rock side of my gothic folks. Jesús and I were very much into that shit, NIN, William Gibson cyberpunk, Cronenberg's new flesh, Tetsuo, Ghost in the Shell… those naives times where hackers were modern Robin Hoods instead of just ordinary cybercrime. So It was inevitable that, having in mind W0rldtr33 starts in the nineties, I realized how much W0rldtr33 was connected with my own youth and how the bond with that time is pretty much musical.

So, here we are, in the unofficial soundtrack of W0rldtr33. 

Music is a very important part of my work process. Maybe music isn't directly involved in how I tell a story in the sense that, there are comic artists and writers who uses musical structures in their work, but definitely music is with me through all my work time and affects the way I work and the energy I put in my drawings can be fueled in different ways, depending which music I'm hearing. I consciously vary the kind of music I hear depending on the part of the process and what I'm looking for. It's not just they are music styles that are very intrusive when I need a high level of concentration, like when I’m reading the script and sequencing it. It's more on purpose... Music affects the way I draw, the speed I draw, the attention to detail I put when I'm drawing, the energy of the stroke... So I modify the soundtrack of my work time to look for specific moods. 

But the script itself evokes different musical landscapes and the W0rldtr33 script constantly evokes a lot of music as I told you before. So in this soundtrack the evocation sometimes is pretty clear by the lyrics or sometimes the lyrics don't have anything to do with W0rldtr33 but the music has a strong W0rldtr33 mood to me.  

Inevitably, this soundtrack starts in the 90's with NIN and 90's industrial sounds, also techno rock, trip-hop or all punk-rock-hardcore-metal-grunge-whatever musical blender of the nineties. But like the W0rldtr33 story itself, we go back in time, exploring the antecedents of those sounds, prog rock, psychedelic sounds, free jazz... and into the future (our present) through the post rock sounds, electronic jazz fusion or new psychedelia. 

Also has a horror soundtrack, but it's not a playful eighties horror movie, so there's no place for colorful 80's heavy metal, which is perfectly fine in his context, but this is not his context. This is a more uncomfortable and twisted horror, so the soundtrack often is hard to listen to, fuzzy, noisy, chaotic, but also cerebral… cold like the machine. 

And also there is some light through this soundtrack, like there is some light in our story... But still we have to guess if it's a warm human light or just the iced glow of artificial intelligence pretending to be human.’

🚨Merch!🚨

Our friends at Third Eye Comics have some very stylish W0rldTr33 merch for those of you that crave comfy t-shirts and exclusive variants. Wearing one of our shirts as you read this? Be sure to tag us at @readtinyonion. We work very hard and enjoy seeing others look cool in our wears. It boosts crew morale.

HOUSE OF SLAUGHTER #19

W: Sam Johns / A: Letizia Cadonici / C: Francesco Segala / L: AndWorld Design / Cover B: Werther Dell’Edera / E: Eric Harburn & Ramiro Portnoy / Created by: James Tynion IV & Werther Dell’Edera

Bait is burdened with the unbearable truth of Nannette's condition and what it could mean if she learns of her connection to the monsters. To save her and the children, Bait will have to make an impossible choice... but with new revelations about his true origins, will what he has to do truly be the worst of his actions?

W0RLDTR33 Vol. 1

W: James Tynion IV / A & Cover: Fernando Blanco / C: Jordie Bellaire / L: Aditya Bidikar / D: Dylan Todd / E: Steve Foxe

In 1999, Gabriel and his friends discovered the Undernet— a secret architecture to the internet. They charted their exploration on a message board called W0RLDTR33.
Then they lost control. Someone broke into W0RLDTR33— someone who welcomed the violent hold the Undernet had on them. At great personal cost, Gabriel and the others thought they sealed the Undernet away for good.

They were wrong. And now the whole world will know the meaning of PH34R.
Don't miss the next major horror outing from multiple Eisner Award-winning writer JAMES TYNION IV (THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH, The Nice House on the Lake) and FERNANDO BLANCO (Detective Comics).

Collects WORLDTR33 #1-5

Next week, The Deviant #1 comes out on 11/15. He knows when you’re sleeping, and he knows when you’re awake, so put on a thick coat and lock your doors.

Since I’m writing this email and have gone mad with power, let’s make a deal. If you wear a Santa hat while picking up your copy of The Deviant, tag us (@readtinyonion on Instagram) in a photo and we’ll send you something special for the holidays. First tag, first serve. Edit: I’ve been warned that y’all are ravenous so let’s limit this offer to the first three people. I am limited by my lack of interest to stand in line at the USPS during the holiday rush.

For more tiny fun, follow us on Instagram and Bluesky.

Have a lovely week, onion fans! 
May your layers never cease to amaze.
Over and out,