[Editor’s note: This review may contain spoilers.]
Writer: Warren Ellis
Artist: Jon Davis-Hunt
Inker: Ivan Plascencia
Summary
Lucy Blaze, AKA Zealot, has a mission. We are just not sure what it is yet, but she did just drown a guy in a toilet. Priscilla Kitaen, AKA Voodoo, does as well. She is in a band and wants to be super famous. Angela Spica, who does not have a code name but totally should, is also on a mission. She needs money from her boss for research and development. Jacob Marlowe, owner of a company called Halo that is famous for changing consumer electronics, is having a bad day in that a rival throws him out of a window. The rival works for Angela’s boss, Miles Craven. He owns a company called IO, AKA International Operations. The guy doing the tossing is called Michael Cray. He does the killing stuff that Craven needs done. You know, because that is a thing. Anyway, Marlowe is falling out of a building and splat: Good night everyone. No…Just kidding. He lives because Angela is a robot who can fly. What?! By the way, Cray and Marlowe might also be part robot. The Wild Storm has begun.
Positives
Did you read that summary? You must have if you are reading this. That is a whole lot of crazy going on. What I left out of the summary is that the readers follow the action as though they are watching a Robert Altman film. We see a character go into a panel and we stick with a different character in that panel or someone walks through a panel and we follow that character. It does not keep up for the whole book, but it is a really smart way to tell a story. Because of this moving camera type of action, the complex plot does not seem as complex. We follow along smoothly as we meet the characters and discover all the crazy things about them. In a book that has this many characters, it could be hard to keep everything straight, but that is simply not the case here. Ellis and Davis-Hunt do an excellent job of keeping us engaged.
Speaking of Jon Davis-Hunt, the pencil work in this book is gloriously gory. There is a lot of blood in this issue, as you can see from the cover (that is Zealot, Michael and Voodoo going left to right), there is blood splatter on everything. That is a little detail, but that is what is glorious. The little details matter. If you love some manga, this is not for you. Every little fold of every shirt is taken into account. It is as though a comic were drawn by a forensic photographer. It pulls the reader in and makes the reader cringe.
Negatives
Did you read the summary up there? Okay, yes. Bad joke. There is a lot going on and I can not be sure that each comic will be as easy to follow. Like Rob Williams’ Unfollow series, having a lot of characters can be a blessing or a curse.
Verdict
This is only one issue and there are a lot of questions to be answered here so I am hopeful. Because this springs from the mind of Jim Lee, I am even more hopeful.
