If you live in a major metropolis, you’re sure to have one: A sort of satellite town within an hour’s drive away, maybe even closer. It could be a bedroom community, a place that people call home, of course. Or maybe it’s larger than that. Maybe it’s even large enough to have its own economy and be designated a city itself.
Toronto, the city in which I live, is like other major metropolitan locales. It has many such towns and cities arrayed in the sprawling land that surrounds it. In parts of the Greater Toronto Area, you can find The city of Richmond Hill to the north, the city of Mississauga to the west and even the city of Oshawa to the east, to name only a few.
Oshawa. If you don’t live there, it might be easy to forget.
For Torontonians, Oshawa is the city you drive through via Highway 401 when on your way to Montreal. But Oshawa is more than a waypoint. It’s a hub of Canada’s auto industry and home to over 170,000 people who live, work and play there. Personally, I know it’s also home to a great shawarma spot that a friend of mine introduced me to. He should know. He made the daily commute to the General Motors plant. Not an easy drive with all the traffic and weather that the GTA endures. Shawarma helps.
The name Oshawa originates from the Ojibwa word “aazhawe,” which means “the crossing place.” It could sound somewhat ominous within the right context, and today’s release puts it squarely in that mysterious, almost nefarious framework.
What happens when a city just inexplicably ups and vanishes and the survivors themselves begin to forget their shared history?
That’s the premise of the just-released trade paperback collection of The Displaced.
Written by Ed Brisson (Thundercats: Apex, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Predator) and wonderfully illustrated by Luca Casalanguida (James Bond, Regarding the Matter of Oswald’s Body) and published by BOOM! Studios, The Displaced trade paperback collects the fascinating five-issue miniseries from earlier this year. It’s the story of the fleeting memory of Oshawa, a city that is abruptly swallowed up by the land, the terrain perfectly folded over so evenly that it looks as if the city and its inhabitants never even existed. Houses and townhomes disappeared. Factories and businesses are gone. Schools and playgrounds vanished. Family and friends, lives, lost. And the world forgets that Oshawa was ever…there.
But the survivors, the “lucky” ones who were outside the city limits at the time of the disappearance, remember. Unfortunately, they, too, are forgetting. Now, in increasingly smaller and smaller groups, they must overcome their own histories, differences and overbearing sense of hopelessness and band together to solve the supernatural mystery of their lives before they themselves are all forgotten!
Remember to make the run to your local comic book shop or bookstore and pick up the mysteriously thrilling The Displaced trade paperback collection today.
You can catch the trailer for The Displaced directly below to get a greater feel for the story and the series’ visuals.
