Alison Carter is a private detective. Her beat: the end of the world, or more accurately, preventing same. With an attitude of ''shoot first and the hell with the questions,'' she leads a life that would drive other investigators mad, filled with monsters, demons, trolls, mad prophets, zombie detectives, technomages, machine-gun toting imps and dead boyfriends. In the first action-packed installment of this new universe, Al is given her biggest assignment ever, one that will take her into the heart of Ultimate Darkness itself. The first of a four-issue miniseries, this issue contains 30 pages of story, unbroken by advertisements.