Rating: 3/5 – Great start but may be hard to find this issue.
The title is not a great indication of what you’re going to end up getting from the comic. I was at first (without any other research) expecting something with some kind of fantasy/mythological slant to it. Not the case. What we get is a pretty solid urban crime/political intrigue story although the last page teases us with something that has the look of the supernatural, but done from a scientific angle, I believe. If you liked Brian K. Vaugh’s Ex Machina, this series may be up your alley.
I enjoyed this issue but question how easy this comic will be for the average fan to get their hands on. I’m not even finding it listed on several of the sites I go to that list lots of comics & are usually a good source for me to grab the cover images I use to go with these reviews. Given that many stores focus on the major publishers, it could very well be the case that many people who would really enjoy the series are never even going to see it in their local shop, it’s “sold out” via Diamond, but a bit of research shows that it is available for sale directly from the Ardden web-site.
We have a countdown clock at the bottom of the pages set in “current story time throughout the issue. It starts at 12:03:01 and runs down to 02:59:55 in this issue, I’m left curious as to what’s going to happen when we hit zero.
Another thing touted by this issue is the “DigiComicCode”. When you hit a story point on page 6, we’re told we can see what happened to one of the main character off panel by entering the code provided in the comic on the Ardden site to get 2 extra pages of the story for free on-line. Well, I’ve had the comic for a month now and when I go to the site & enter the code I’m still told “Coming Soon! Check back soon end enter the code found in issue #1” by the website. This is not good and is costing this issue some ranking points. If you’re going to brag about this innovation at least make sure you have the pages available when the issue hits the stands.
That said, I really enjoyed Richard Emms’ story and Marco Turini’s art was a good fit for the urban crime setting. I’m looking forward to #2, hopefully I’ll be able to get my hands on it!
Reviewed by: Bob Bretall – bob@comicspectrum.com
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