By: Adam Egypt Mortimer (writer/creator), Darick Robertson (art/creator), Diego Rodriguez (colors) and Crank! (letters)
The Story: Butch needs to get help for his hung-over, sentient gun.
Review (with SPOILERS): The first issue of this series really caught me by surprise. I get relatively few of my comics in paper form anymore, but am still an active reader of Previews and a pre-orderer. So, I usually know precisely what comics will be handed to me when I visit the comic shop on Wednesdays. Ballistic #1 caught me by surprise. I’d forgotten it was coming out and didn’t have any expectations going into the first issue. What I got was this incredibly rich world full of sentient devices, bad stereotype Asian villains and a demonic gun that uses recreational drugs. It was big, beautiful and zany. I loved it.
I suspected that this issue might not be as special merely because I now had expectations. However, The Mortimer/Robertson team has kept the awesome rolling again. I’m confident that this will be an awesome little series.
Every few pages there is some cool concept introduced or some visual image that just seizes you and forces you to pay attention. We start with a cool introduction to what has gone wrong in this future world: How it all crashed before being saved by this organic technology lead to sentient guns, flying cars with dragon wings and walls that just open up to allow maintenance. All of these crash scenarios are cool and could merit their own series just based on the concept: Flesh-eating acid rain, AIDS robots, weaponized contagious rage blackouts, giant mosquitos… We get nothing more than a panel of each and then are rushed along to the story. It reminds me of visiting a zoo and you’re enjoying looking at the gorillas and then someone makes you go along because the lions are being fed live meat and then they yank you along again to watch monkeys knife-fighting.
Anyway, the story itself in Ballistic is kinda incidental. There’s a low-level thug named Butch. He’s run afoul of all the criminal gangs and all the police. He owes money to everyone. His one edge is his sentient gun (that is powered by jacking into Butch’s adrenal system)……and that sentient gun is having a HUGE downer after using too many drugs the night before. The issue revolves around Butch running around town, trying to get the drugs that will fix his gun/friend/partner, because you of course fix a downer with more drugs, right? This leads to the most insanely vulgar scene I’ve read in awhile: This one place that they go for help, they run into this buxom blond who can help. Then we notice that the right side of her face is all messed up. What happened? “Flesh eating porno. It’s going around.” WTF? There is no explanation of what exactly “flesh eating porno” is, but it’s obviously something so bad that it literally melts your face. Then she proceeds to “help” the gun by letting him breastfeed from her because she has “been on a steady intake of morphine” and can deliver this morphine via her breasts. Butch remarks that this is “quite a talent” and while you’re still reeling from the concept of “flesh eating porno” and a sentient gun suckling, she says, “You should see what comes out of my penis.” Seriously? WTF? And then that part of the scene ends without any further explanation. The comment just hangs in the air and the disfigured human morphine drip doesn’t appear again in the issue. But, that’s just how crazy this comic is. It’s inventive, vulgar and funny. I love it.
The other thing that I love is how excited Robertson seems about this issue from an art standpoint. I never felt like he was THAT into drawing The Boys. The art in Ballistic reminds me very much of the guy who drew Transmetropolian. It’s the same type of world: dirty, near-future with all sorts of odd technology. Robertson is just nailing this stuff and the work is nicely colored too. It’s a visual treat.
Conclusion: I think this might now be my new favorite comic. Edgy, provocative and unafraid. Check it out.
Grade: A
-Dean Stell
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