December 2013, Image Comics, Berkeley, CA, 22 pages

Set in 1804, in an alternative reality, where modern monuments like the Saint Louis Arch are overgrown with vegetation, and fantastical bison humanoids prowl like nightmare centaurs, the world of Manifest Destiny is about the strangest setting imaginable. What really makes it work is the author’s determination to portray the members of Lewis and Clark’s famous expedition as early 19th Century Americans, a brutalized offshoot of the brutalized British mercantile empire.

Captain Clark, younger brother of brutal war hero George Rogers Clark, is depicted as an authentic period military officer. Officers of the Black Powder Age were primarily concerned with discipline, which meant beating their men regularly, punishing them brutally, and killing them when necessary. His partner Lewis provides a compelling, though not overly humane, counterpart to Clark’s brutal authoritarian character.

Chris Dingess is playing it close to the vest here, giving a little insight into this weird world of his in each issue. It is looking like something is wrong with the vegetation in this world, something hideously wrong.