Titan Comics 2021
Written by K. Perkins & Mellow Brown
Illustrated by Fernando Dagnino
Coloured by Marco Lesko
Lettered by Jim Campbell
This arc’s epic concluding issue reveals a conspiracy at the heart of the Tyrell empire! On the trail of an escaped experimental Replicant, Detective Carl Moreaux becomes the hunted.
I’ve said before that this is the perfect place to jump into the franchise with, and I still mean this one hundred percent, but I’m going to expand that and say if you love science fiction period this is something you need to have in your life. Heck even if you aren’t a science fiction fan you want to read the first arc of this because it’s just a bloody phenomenal book! I’m a huge fan of the fact that we’re on issue eight of the series and we’re still in the first arc of the series because that just means the story is playing itself out as it should, not rushed or forced to fit in a smaller trade arc format. We have lost this particular aspect of storytelling so it’s nice to see that Titan is allowing for this series to be told this way. Also it’s been giving us more than a proper amount of time to really get to know Cal and how his world works.
I’m a huge fan of the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. The character development that we see through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter does this magnificent job in continuing to flesh out their ever changing and evolving personalities. The pacing is excellent and it takes us through the pages revealing more and more of the story we’re caught up in this like Dorothy in the tornado.
I’m super impressed with the way that we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to grow, evolve, emerge and strengthen. I also really like the way we see these layers open up new avenues to be explored. Whether they get explored or not isn’t relevant because they all add this great depth, dimension and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how we see it move the story forward are impeccably handled.
The interiors here are bloody mindbogglingly brilliant to behold. Fernando outdoes himself with the linework and how we see its varying weights and techniques being utilised to create this level & quality of work in the attention to detail throughout the book. How we see the backgrounds being utilised to enhance and expand the moments as well as how we see them work within the composition of the panels to bring out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story is magnificently rendered. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a masterful eye for storytelling. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows this brilliant understanding of how colour works. The creativity and imagination that we see throughout is bloody brilliant to see and it really showcases the replicants abilities and makeup, how the body is constructed, beautifully.
This is one of my favourite series. It has some of the most dynamic and interesting writing and this stellar characterisation alongside these utterly mindbogglingly brilliant interiors really make this a science fiction epic for the ages.