By: Adam Egypt Mortimer (writer/story), Darick Robertson (art/story), Diego Rodriguez (colors) and Crank! (letters)
The Story: An air conditioner repairman and his sentient pistol get into trouble with the Korean mafia.
Review (with minor SPOILERS): Geez… This comic really scratched that itch that demands something “different” in your comics. I really loved it and recommend you seek it out. If I had to give it a music comparison, it would be kinda like you were calming listening to soft jazz (i.e. other comics this week) and one of your friends snuck up, switched your music to old, British punk rock and jacked the volume all the way up… It certainly makes you sit up in your chair and pay attention.
This was actually a hard review to write because what makes the comic nifty are all cool visuals and concepts. The first couple of drafts of the review descended into “and then he got into his car…..and it had demonic wings that matched the candy-apple red pain of his 50’s Chevy coupe…..and then his gun shot fire everywhere and then…” I hate those types of reviews, but it’s an issue that functions at that crazy-stuff, overload level, so it is hard to avoid the “and then…” aspect.
The story is set in a near future Korea where all the technology is at least somewhat demonic/organic. I mentioned the protagonist’s winged car, but this organic theme goes everywhere. In fact, the protagonist is an air conditioner repairman and to fix the AC, he has to do things like convince an organic wall to open an orifice, then he plunges in his arm and rummages around in the guts of the beast until he finds the part/organ that isn’t working. If you read and enjoyed Orc Stain, this comic has that same type of feel where all the devices are alive. The setting feels like something that could have happened on the other side of the world from the Transmetropolitan characters. I can almost imagine Spider Jerusalem saying, “I’d never go to Korea where they have all those f*****-up demon cars….”
But, the most interesting object in the story is the protagonist’s gun. See, even though he is an AC repairman, he’s a wanna-be hustler. So, he is always afoul of techno Korean gangsters and owes money to all the wrong people. Hence, he carries this awesome, sentient demonic pistol. When he shoots the gun, it wraps it’s tail around his forearm and sucks adrenalin from his blood stream; the more excited the protagonist is, the more the gun can shoot. And the gun is funny, with its dialog is all loud and crude. Love it…
The main reason I even tried this comic from Black Mask publishing was because it had Darick Robertson’s name on the cover. I loved his work in Transmetropolitan and it seems like he’s spent the last few years drawing things that I really didn’t want to read. He’s in fine form in this issue. It’s interesting how his style jumps around. Sometimes it looks like the classic stuff we saw in Transmet or The Boys, but he almost goes photorealistic in a few places. I wonder if he drew all of the pages at the same time or if he’s been working on this off-and-on for a few years? Regardless, his art is what makes the comic cool. All the concept in the world wouldn’t matter if the protagonist didn’t have a lick of charisma and if his girlfriend didn’t have that kinda spunky look and if the sentient gun didn’t have a visual personality. I mean, you can’t just draw word balloons, point the tails thereof at a pistol and call it a “talking gun”. Robertson does all the stuff that make the gun act with it’s eyes, mouth, etc. And, if you’ve read Transmet, you know that Robertson is singularly skilled at drawing a techno-funky urban area.
Conclusion: The power of novelty is strong and this issue has it in spades. Check it out even if it’s just a chance to see something new from Robertson. It’ll be interesting to see how issue #2 feels now that we know what to expect.
Grade: A-
– Dean Stell
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Conclusion