Top Cow Productions 2017
Written by Zack Kaplan
Illustrated by Andrea Mutti
Coloured by Vladimir Popov
Lettered by Troy Peteri
Aliens have come to Earth with a business deal: a spaceport on our planet. Now Earth's Security Agents are hunting down a dangerous rogue alien who’s broken loose on the California coast, but one agent’s personal feelings about Earth’s deal with the aliens may push him to defy protocols and threaten the mission.
When the truth came out that the Consortium was a business and not an inter-galactic united nations peoples opinions started to change. No longer were they as supportive of this endeavour but questions about it began to rise and rise and with aliens now leaving the port and entering the United States, which is against the rules tensions are rising even higher. So who did get the best end of the deal and who’s job is it to protect the deal and who’s job is it to protect the humans? Which one comes first? These are legitimate questions and as the series continues we’ll see just how they get answered in the meantime it’s all pretty much chaos.
Zack’s characterisation here is fantastic and the dialogue is beyond what I was expecting. The opening is stunning in it’s scope as we see a recap of issue one and how it also moves the story forward into the next, or current, chapter. Which involves Rice and McEntyre who we saw last issue chase an alien into a tunnel. That is where we see them again and its the what we get to focus on for the rest of the issue.
Actually I think the way the whole thing plays out is a great example of Zack’s skill, talent and/or penchant for writing. We get a look at the company line and what the common man thinks. This is where we see how Zack’s experience writing for television and films comes into play in the way his mind works and how he thinks when it comes to not only the structure of the story but also how the ebb & flow should feel. It is one of the reasons that I have really enjoyed the books Zack has created and why when something of his comes out I’m definitely going to be reading it.
His pairing here with Andrea is marvellous to see. His eye for storytelling is impressive to say the least through his use of page layouts with their angles and perspective. The work with the guys underground that we see in all black and white is crazy good and then seeing that alien hanging from the ceiling was one of those holy crap kind of moments. The sheer amount of attention to detail here from the smallest to the largest makes this whole thing such a spectacular read. The muted tones while we see them chasing it through the market place is a great mood setter.
I like the complexity of the story and how there’s never really going to be a clear cut answer to the many questions floating around. From a business standpoint they’ve already made the deal and it’s going to be difficult to break and then with the aliens skipping port and heading to the mainland the deal can’t be broken and that means that they can’t shoot aliens on sight. So that the conflict is clearly laid out it’ll be interesting to see where Zack takes things.
With both Rice and McEntyre’s dialogue and interaction during the chase we see both of point of views. This is how we’re going to get to see how the conflict divides everyone and not just through the whole televised talking segments but by the men who are tasked with keeping the peace. This, this is how we get into the series through normal people in extraordinary circumstances.