By Taylor Anderson

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

It doesn’t take much to read into the allegory of Come Into Me. We are a society that increasingly shares every aspect of our private lives with the world. Some would argue that this is a great way of connecting people, but others, like writers Zac Thompson and Lonnie Nadler, would contend that it violates our privacy at worst and is used as a money making scheme at best. In the first issue of Come Into Me, the creators offer an intriguing look into the possibilities of sharing your personal experience, even if it comes accompanied with certain amounts of horror.

Sebastian is a scientist who has developed a wonderfully disgusting technology that allows people to share two minds in one body. This allows individuals the chance to experience what it’s like to be someone else in a very literal way. We aren’t talking about empathy or social media here — this is the real deal of sharing a person’s thoughts, feelings, and even the way their body feels.

This last bit about sharing bodies is perhaps the most intriguing idea in this issue. Characters experiencing other characters’ mental states has been done before in comic, most notably in X-Men. However, the idea of how a person’s physical body affects their mind is an idea that is relatively untapped.

When Becky, a plucky woman convinces Sebastian to let her try his new technology, she is surprised to find out what it’s like to share his body when they merge minds. For one, Sebastian is overweight, yet he has a vast amount of energy and power is his heavy limbs. She concludes that existing in her body is just so different from her own. Her revelation points out a keen understanding about human consciousness. Much as we might try to forget it, our minds are tied to, and influenced by, out bodies. Being in someone else’s body not only would affect things way you feel, but the way you feel, given that different bodies create different chemicals which control the brain.

Whether or not Thompson and Nadler decide to explore this idea in more detail in subsequent issues will be exciting to see. It’s so fresh and unique I hope they do. This is a far more exciting idea than writing a story that condemns social media. While that’s a worthwhile message, it isn’t exactly new, whereas learning how a new body influences a mind is.

The conversation doesn’t stop there. What do you wanna talk about from this issue?