By: Enrique Carrion (writer & creator), John Upchurch (art & colors) & Rafael Diaz (letters)
The Story: Agent Barrino gets called in to evaluate an artificial intelligence who wants to be transferred to a human body and along the way he runs into his sexy, assassin ex-girlfriend (is there any other kind?). Meanwhile, a former Vescell employee is doing back-alley consciousness transfers and that simply won’t do…
What’s Good: This series is really promising and cool. The first issue was all kinds of fun as it told the story of an Agent Barrino who works for the Vescell Corporation. Vescell has perfected the ability to transfer a person’s consciousness from one body to another. So it has a science fiction angle. Some of those wanting to be transferred have shady pasts, so it picks up a vibe kinda like the Transporter movies as Agent Barrino tries to bring the patients safely into Vescell for the transfer. Then it has a demonic angle as we learn that Barrino’s girlfriend has been banished to a Hellish realm. And there’s Barrino’s “partner” who is a pixie/fairy who he can shoot out of a special gun. Oh, and all the women are sexy as hell. That was a LOT of good stuff for a first issue.
We’ve all seen new comics quickly lose their luster, so it was great to see the momentum keep going in this issue. For one thing, this is a 30-page issue, and it’s a dense 30 pages! Compared to a “normal” comic, you’re probably getting about 4-5 issues worth of story here and when you combine with the material in the first issue, we’ve had a LOT of Vescell injected into us. Trust me, some of the decompressed writers at the Big 2 would play with this amount of story for 40 issues. So, writer Carrion has plenty of room to introduce us to two new people who want to have a Vescell switcheroo. Each of these characters has a very different and unique reason for wanting to be switched, but they both weave together seamlessly with the activities of Agent Barrino and his fairy partner Machii. You’ve got a little bit of everything in this issue: action, violence, sex, deception, betrayal, plotting…
The art is pretty hot too. The art looks very digital and it isn’t the type of art that I usually gush over, but there’s just something about the way that Upchurch is pulling everything together. I think one of the things working to his advantage is that he’s coloring his own work. It reminds me a little bit of the art that Axel Medellin does on Elephantmen where there isn’t a neat demarcation between linework and color-art. It’s just one piece of art. I’m not sure how well it would work if a third party came in to color this; they might well turn it into a butchery of overly highlighted body parts. But, because Upchurch is doing it all, he probably knows what he needs to digitally ink and what he can get with the colors.
What To Beware Of: If you don’t like sexy comics, well, just stay away. This comic has lots of sexy talk and a one graphic sex scene (and the first issue was that way too). It isn’t anything X Rated, but it is a hard R. I kinda like my comics this way (and it’s really well done), but if you’re squeamish about that sort of thing this won’t be for you.
My only other small bugaboo is that I was tired by the end of the issue. I don’t want to criticize because I enjoyed the amount of information I was given. I also don’t think it is fair to call the comic “wordy” because when I think of wordy I mean “lots of words, not strung together very well” and Carrion writes well enough that volume isn’t the problem. It’s more that as a comic reader I’m used to a comic taking a certain amount of time to read and this took longer. It’s a good kind of tired, but I probably wouldn’t have minded the same pacing and 2 fewer pages. Plus, these guys are going to kill themselves doing a monthly 30-page comic book.
Conclusion: A very exciting new comic series that is really flying under the radar with everyone prattling on about the new 52 from DC. That’s a shame because whereas DC is really just shoveling the same material at you that you either enjoyed (or didn’t) for the last few decades, Vescell is actually telling an innovative story and doing it very well. But it.
Grade: A-
-Dean Stell
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