Review: Blade Runner 2019 #8
[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]
Writers:Â Â Mike Johnson and Michael Green
Artists:Â Andres Guinaldo
Colors:Â Marco Lesko
Letters: Â Jim Campbell
Reviewed by: Carl Bryan
Summary
The second arc of Blade Runner 2019 reaches its climactic conclusion as former Blade Runner Ash’s mission takes her where no other Blade Runner would dare to go – the never-before-seen Off-World colonies!
From the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Blade Runner 2049, Michael Green, and co-writer Mike Johnson (Star Trek, Supergirl).
Positives
First, the story telling is awesome and writers Mike Johnson and Michael Green have found the right way to continue the Blade Runner franchise. The Blade Runners are world wide in their hunt for replicants. Ash has a heart like Harrison Ford’s Dekkar, and she is torn between her history, the allegiance to be a Blade Runner, but her compassion for the intertwining of humans and replicants.
Johnson and Green are a writing tag team force. From flashbacks of Ash’s history (just a mere 20 years ago our time…) to current day 2026 (wait…isn’t this Blade Runner 2019?), each issue of this comic reads like a movie.
The artwork is superb. Andres Guinaldo captures the cinema of Blade Runner as well as develops the script he was provided.
And this issue crescendos with Ash in a tug of war between her job, her new found Blade Runner partner, Hyethe, and the history of Isabel giving up Cleo so Ash could get Cleo away from her father.
No spoilers here as the ending is really the story, and to describe any of it would get in the way of what the comic is conveying.
Negatives
Crickets are chirping as you need to check this out! This comic is breaking the rules a bit in expanding our knowledge of the Blade Runner universe. If you are a Pulp Noir fan or simply a Blade Runner fan, you should be on board with this Titan Comics entry.
Verdict
This story arc concludes in a tight fashion, but it also provides Ash more resoluteness about her mission, where she is in life, and I can imagine we see a stronger Ash in future issues! Again, this entire story arc is worth reading, especially over a bowl of noodles and in a rain storm!
