Review: Blade Runner Origins #5
[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]
Publisher: Titan Comics
Writers:Â K Perkins, Mellow Brown, Mike Johnson
Artist: Fernando Dagnino
Colors:Â Marco Lesko
Letters: Â Jim Campbell
Reviewed by: Carl Bryan
Summary
Enter the world of Blade Runner: 2009 and Discover the untold origins of the Blade Runners!
Blade Runner Origins #4 – Recently the dangerous escaped Nexus 5 has appeared in “The Slums”. Detective Cal Moreaux’s old neighborhood.
Tyrell Corp Executive Ilora Stahl shot and killed Effie, a junior bio engineer, for withholding information on the Nexus 5 program. In an attempt to control Cal, Ilora threatened to burn down The Slums in one week if Cal did not recover the rogue Replicant. Fully understanding how deep the rot goes, Cal left the force in protest over the corrupt relationship between the LAPD and the Tyrell Corporation
Now a rogue agent himself, but still tethered to the Nexus 5 mission, Cal has requested the help of Asa, A replicant with the simulated consciousness of senior bio engineer Dr. Lydia Line, because time on Ilora’s threat is running out….
Positives
K Perkins, Mellow Brown, & Mike Johnson …Can you really come back home again? Moreaux, despite his best efforts at wanting to make sure his neighborhood is not decimated by the Tyrell Corp is not necessarily greeted the way you would expect over a nice homecoming meal.
Perkins, Brown and Johnson create a very haunting story within the Blade Runner Origins. What happens when the programming does go wrong? And when it involves a little kid, and a kitchen knife… plenty of suspense in this issue. You can almost here the carrots chopping and a pot over boiling ala Fatal Attraction.
The team on this book does a great job yet again giving us nuggets for the canon while keeping us on the edge of our seat!
Positives 2.0
Fernando Dagnino …he captures the grit and the dirtiness and the neon of a Blade Runner LA. Underground clubs shine bright with colors and the high collared jacket we know and love associated with Harrison Ford’s Deckard has a new owner in Cal Moreaux.  Dagnino’s pencils give us enough new elements to keep it fresh while keeping the roots of the original movie!
The rooftops. The steam rising. The city scapes. You can smell this city within the pages. While I am supposed to be visually impressed with the art, I cannot help but smell the landscape of this rainy LA.
Negatives
Crickets are chirping as you need to check this out! This comic is what we have been craving as a prequel in expanding our knowledge of the Blade Runner universe. We get to really see the seeds of what the Tyrell Corp puts into play. Replicants….are they more human than we are? What goes wrong when the Replicants are stuck in a loop? Tough stuff…and the Tyrell Corp is as evil as Darth Vader’s Empire!
Verdict
We get to really see the seeds of what the Tyrell Corp puts into play.  Cal has a cliff hanger of an ending which may be the spark of Blade Runners. Perhaps? If it was, it was perfectly sequenced and drawn. When you think this comic cannot get any better and is on cruise control, it definitely accelerates to the passing lane to give you an adrenaline rush!
