Review: Blade Runner 2019 TPB

[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]

Writers:   Mike Johnson and Michael Green

Artists:  Andres Guinaldo

Colors:  Marco Lesko

Letters:   Jim Campbell

Reviewed by: Carl Bryan

Summary

The first original comic series set in the iconic neo-noir world of Blade Runner! Detective Ash is a veteran Blade Runner, set on the trail of a kidnapped child in the streets of Los Angeles, 2019 – but as the bodies mount and Replicants crawl from the shadows, Ash’s own secrets come under fire! From writer Michael Green (screenwriter for Blade Runner 2049) and Mike Johnson (Star Trek), and illustrated by Andres Guinaldo (Justice League Dark, Captain America)!

Welcome to the rain soaked world of Los Angeles 2019 – a dystopian world of Replicants, Spinners and hardboiled future noir. Veteran Blade Runner Detective Aahana “Ash” Ashina finds herself in a race against time to find a billionaire’s missing wife and child before they are gone forever. With her only suspects being renegade replicants, she’s out for blood.

Positives

First, the story telling is awesome and writers Mike Johnson and Michael Green  have found the right way to approach the Blade Runner franchise!  Harrison Ford’s Deckard burns into our brain and this is not your father’s Blade Runner!  Ash is everything you want in a Blade Runner…battered and bruised from being shot down in her spinner, with a broken arm.  She embodies her movie predecessor!

From the opening prologue explanation – “DETECTIVE AAHNAASHINA OF THE LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT WAS ONE OF THE FIRST TO QUALIFY FOR THE ASSIGNMENT.  HER COLLEAGUES CALLED HER ASH.  SHE WAS THE BEST OF THEM.” – How ominous is that….”She Was….”  Whether that is alluding to Ash’s demise or a simple error in the phrase, you’ll be hooked.

The rain is omnipresent in Blade Runner! The rain has to be a character in anything Blade Runner related.  The comic would not be the same without frame upon frame of rain.  The rain is a supporting character in Blade Runner!

The city…the landscape..the noodle bars…and the steam rising from the street.  How this is not picked up to be a sequel of some sort on the big screen is beyond me.  The artwork is superb.  Andres Guinaldo captures the cinema of Blade Runner as well as develops the script he was provided.  I could not fathom all the new playgrounds this concept now has unleashed.

This comic is what the movie goers crave now, as the latest Blade Runner was a sequel of sorts for Harrison Ford’s Deckard.  However, this comic provides the right hero at the right time in Ash.

Negatives

Crickets are chirping as you need to check this out!  if you are a fan of Science Fiction, and Pulp Noir, this is your comic!

Verdict

I cannot wait for Ash to go off world.  And I really want an explanation about her right eye.  But in the mean time, she has totally replaced my paradigm of Harrison Ford being the one true Blade Runner.  And that is saying a lot for this comic!