Deniz Camp is speaking straight to my soul with Assorted Crisis Events #9, delivering a comic that hits like an absolute sledgehammer to the chest. This is easily one of the most powerful, raw, and fiercely relatable books I have picked up all year. Camp takes the high-concept chaos of an interdimensional time war and turns it into a blistering, razor-sharp look at the soul-crushing weight of modern survival. It exposes just how deeply the endless chase for money has taken over human existence. When you know what it feels like to risk your own life and limb just to escape poverty, this story cuts deep. Camp captures the quiet dread where simply looking for a job fills your gut with anxiety, all while the rich write the rules and the working class breaks its back just to keep loved ones alive. It is brilliant, furious, and undeniably human.
Clocking In for the Time War
The story follows Chuckie D, a twenty-three-year-old aspiring DJ who is broke with less than five dollars to his name. Out of options, he signs up for an app called TEMP, which drops gig workers straight onto the front lines of an eternal time war between King Kronos and Drang. The app's rules are brutal. The pay is awful, you lose money just for checking your phone, and the company takes zero responsibility if you get hurt or die. Cruelest of all, if you die on the job, your timeline resets and wipes out every dollar you just made. Even when Chuckie survives a full week, the app caps him at thirty-nine hours to avoid providing healthcare benefits. It is a terrible deal, but it is the only one he has. Snippets of phone calls with his sick sister, Daisy, show that Chuckie is putting himself through this meat grinder just to pay for her medicine. Regular shifts fall short, so he takes on dangerous side gigs like hauling heavy stones to build ancient pyramids for fifteen dollars an hour, doing whatever it takes to stay alive so his paycheck stays intact.
The Meat Grinder
Surrounded by constant slaughter, Chuckie quickly realizes how pointless the entire conflict really is. When he asks his squad why they fight and what either side actually stands for, everyone gives the exact same answer: nobody cares about the war, they only care about the paycheck. The endless grind steadily wears Chuckie down, even as he faithfully wires every spare dollar home to Daisy. The only thing keeping him grounded is the bond he builds with his coworkers. Sharing the same misery and cracking jokes helps Chuckie feel human again. That fragile comfort is violently torn away when his entire crew gets wiped out on a mission, leaving Chuckie completely alone once more.
Filing a Complaint
Heartbroken and pushed past his limit, Chuckie decides to file an official complaint through the TEMP app. His veteran peers warn him that challenging the company is a death sentence, but he goes through with it anyway. The punishment comes fast. His commanding boss stabs him straight through the chest, casually explaining that he took an internal side gig as a company hitman to clear the liability. Bleeding out on the floor, Chuckie still finds a way to get the last laugh. With his dying breath, he sells the secret coordinates of the base to rival bounty hunters, grabbing one final payout to send home to Daisy before everything fades to black.
Enter The End
Chuckie's leak triggers immediate chaos as troops from both Kronos and Drang storm the base. They are joined by THE END, a terrifying group of mutant scavengers from a ruined future who exist only to destroy everything in their path. Bleeding out in the dirt, Chuckie welcomes death, relieved that his grueling shift is finally over. That peace is short-lived. Instead of dying, Chuckie wakes up inside a horrifying lab, his broken body crudely stitched back together by THE END. They are keeping him alive for a dark purpose tied to the Broken Man, the mysterious figure haunting the background of every issue in this series. Camp is doing fantastic work connecting these standalone nightmares, building a much larger cosmic puzzle across the entire run.
Drawing A Dystopia
Eric Zawadzki handles the artwork with total precision, carrying the emotional weight of this script across every single page. The way Zawadzki renders the cold, sterile TEMP app interfaces creates a sickening contrast with the bloody reality of the battlefield, using mundane notifications and corporate badges to mock the human lives on the line. In the action scenes, his gritty linework ensures the violence feels heavy and horrific rather than stylish, grounding the cross-time warfare in dirt, sweat, and exhaustion.
The quiet character beats are where Zawadzki really shines, particularly the weary posture and sunken eyes on Chuckie's face during his remote conversations with his sister. You can feel the bone-deep fatigue radiating off the page, which makes Chuckie's horrifying final transformation under THE END land with devastating visual impact.
Conclusion & Verdict
Deniz Camp is speaking directly to anyone who has ever felt trapped by a broken economic system. Chuckie’s journey reflects the harsh reality of living paycheck to paycheck, where everyday people are forced to sell their time and bodies in a rigged game just to stay afloat. By stripping away the fun of time travel to expose the exploitative machine underneath, Camp delivers a brilliant story that cuts straight to the bone.
Verdict: 9/10
A phenomenal, painful read that proves the scariest monster in the multiverse is just trying to pay the bills.