Image Comics 2016
Written by Joe Harris
Illustrated by Martin Morazzo
Coloured by Kelly Fitzpatrick
Lettered by Michael David Thomas
The WHITE WIZARD had been neutralized, and INSPECTOR DAVITIKA DEAL made discoveries both bizarre and terrible in his secret lair. Abandoning her quest to bring the weather terrorist to justice, she instead secured the stolen Hazeltyne Formulary for snow production, along with the carrier who’d been bonded with the mysterious brew and hidden away, comatose, beneath his lair—the scientist’s young daughter, CHLOE. Now, together with climate studies student and budding insurgent against the system, ANTHONY FARROW, DR. REASONS tracks Inspector Deal, Chloe, and the Formulary he created for Hazeltyne then stole from the Cooperative, determined to take his revenge for all they took from him…
First let me give it up to Joe for the pacing of this series so far. Things are moving at a really nice clip here. The way he manages to give us looks at both the past and present interweaving them so the flow seems natural and uninterrupted well it’s really nice to see. From seeing Dr. Reasons past attempts with his control over the weather to make it snow and with his daughter while we get to see her and with Anthony all happening throughout the issue brings us a lot of stuff without feeling overloaded. It’s nice to see that we can have so much given to us and yet have it feel like we aren’t inundated by it.
While we haven’t seen much of the past that caused the future to be the place it is these snippets we do get make me want to know more. I mean the Drowned Bronx well that alone seems like a natural fit and that’s coming from someone who’s parents grew up there and was a baby himself in that part of town. Even better is that we see the mad Doctor wearing his white attire and toting Anthony around in a locked box. With the street gangs and his inability to pull the stunt we saw previously it would seem he’s in a more precarious situation.
Chloe and Davitika however stole the issue for me. This little girl is so much more than her father could have ever bargained for and what he’s done to her well there will be a reckoning indeed. However in the meantime we get to see what she’s capable of and it’s scary to put it mildly. Inspector Deal, Davitika, and her role in all this should be over she delivered the subject and that should be that but it isn’t. So what her growing role in all this will be and what she learns after her experiences this issue could determine the outcome for all involved. That prospect alone is kind of exciting and it’ll be interesting to see what she does next.
Combining science fiction, with a disaster movie style story element and the whole on the lamb from the law Joe is doing something unique here. This unlike anything else i’ve seen and there’s a real sense of excitement and danger happening here that tends to make the pulse race.
Martin and Kelly do a marvelous job keeping the look and feel of the interiors to match up with the story. This futuristic yet damaged world has all the elements of a society with better technology and no real idea of how to use it. The attention to detail here is superbly done and with backgrounds or not the focus of attention is exactly where it should be. The flow of the story here is extremely well done as well, the use of pages and panels show a great eye for storytelling.
Each issue takes me some place a little further from where I expected to be with this story. The writing, dialogue and characterization make this something of a sleeper hit you should sleep on.