In this review of Fort Psycho #1, a clandestine mission gone awry leads to a prison sentence not seen before.
Fort Psycho #1
Writer: Matt Kindt
Art and Main Cover: Brian Hurtt
Variant Covers: Lewis LaRosa, Dustin Weaver, Kyle Starks, David Rubin, Inaki Miranda, Brian Hurtt
Page Count: 40 pages
Release Date: August 5, 2026
Fort Psycho #1 opens with a little background on two opposing groups: The Seven Seals, a terrorist organization that sank the entire city of Singapore and continued to wreak international havoc for ten years, and the mercenary group created by the UN to oppose them, code-named SAW, Strategic Alliance Worldwide.
The next quarter of Fort Psycho #1 details the final confrontation between the two groups in downtown Tokyo, a decisive victory against the Seven Seals that also resulted in an incredible amount of infrastructural damage to the city and an implied number of civilian casualties. Because of this, the remaining agents of both organizations were detained. The Seven Seals at a prison in the Arctic, and SAW at their repurposed base in the Pacific, the decommissioned Fort Cyclone.
In the second half of the comic, we follow Jason, one of the last SAW agents to be captured, as he’s delivered to Fort Cyclone and discovers how his fellow agents have been treated there. Pretty well, actually!
The island is essentially a self-sustaining luxury resort, with a golf course, spa, stables, and hot springs among other amenities. The only thing marring the agents’ stay are the surveillance drones and the regular dose of antidote they need to take to counteract the genetic poison they’ve all been injected with prior to arriving.
It turns out that while some of the agents are familiar with each other, many have never met and none knew each other extremely well prior to capture. As covert agents, this makes some degree of sense. It also follows why, when he was captured, Jason was given the task of uncovering the secret identity of one of the island’s other inmates: the surviving leader of the Seven Seals.
I think author Matt Kindt has set up a really interesting mystery thriller with this first issue. It’s a pretty classic setup with a limited cast of characters, all with their own secrets and complex relationships, stuck together by geography and circumstance, with just enough space so that you’re not quite sure where a person is at a given time. I anticipate a storm blowing in or bodies to start dropping any minute.
Artist Brian Hurtt has designed facilities with a futuristic minimalism architecture style, somewhat impersonal and colorless against the tropical setting, with a lot of floor-to-ceiling glass, giving the feeling of always being watched.
The characters are all in whites and grays on the island, a stark contrast from their distinctive outfits during the final battle. While their designs are still distinctive, it’s easy to tell who’s who, it’s another unsettling element adding to the tension; this is not a happy place, and good things are not going to happen here.
Final Thoughts
Fort Psycho #1 is certainly attention grabbing, and does a good job of introducing a good number of characters while hinting at the coming conflict. I’m definitely looking forward to the next issue!
