Skybound/Image Comics 2018
Written by Andy Diggle
Illustrated by Alessandro Vitti
Coloured by Adriano Lucas
Lettered by Thomas Mauer
The Hardcore program has been compromised, leaving its top operative stranded in another country, his mind trapped in the body of one of America's most wanted. Now he has 72 hours to escape hostile territory, with no allies--only a Lamborghini and a license to kill! Kill! Kill!
I like the idea of this whole concept of the story and the way that it’s being executed. We have seen mind-swapping before or someone taking over another’s body but I don’t think we’ve seen it done quite like this. That originality to the story is what draws the reader in. Almost as if the promise of what we see although tinged with the familiar is foreign enough so that a spark of imagination has been lit in the reader. This is what the power of storytelling is all about and why it has power in and of itself.
There is something about the way that this issue opens that pretty much sets the mood and tone for the entire issue. And by the by can I live in that room please though the empty bookshelves are scary but those windows with the trees sigh. On a personal note Alessandro, Esteban needs to be shirtless a whole lot more! Seriously though the conversation that we see and how the events are unfolding is what really grabs your attention and not in the ways you think. It has this really edgy smartness to it that Andy just seems to be able to nail with perfection.
So last issue Drake ran inside the machine and escaped Markus’ reach temporarily. With his people all dead and the machine untouchable Drake’s time to inhabit this body is counting down. It has all the excitement of a Tom Cruise Mission Impossible but better, because there’s no Cruise. The fact that we are left with more questions than answers at the moment is another level of excitement that I wasn’t quite expecting and I have to say that it makes the readers mind work overtime to come up with their own scenarios as to how something is achievable here. This is why I love Andy and the work he is capable of doing, there’s this simplistic complexity to the work whose layers are layered and it looks straightforward but in reality nothing is straightforward or simple.
Oh my sweet Georgia peaches the interiors here are bloody gorgeous and the way that we see the linework manipulated though their varying weights is magnificent. The subtlety and boldness that mix and match all around are so well done and the fact that we don’t just see backgrounds here but some absolutely amazing foreground work too help to take this from standard 2-Dimension illustration and bring it closer to a 3-D effect. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels shows off a brilliant eye for storytelling. Adriano’s colour work is equally as strong and the control over what we see through shading, gradation or as reflections and whatnot really completes this book and makes things pop at the right time and in the right way.
This is precisely what we need to see right now, this science fiction, action/thriller who’s technology isn’t far off from being a reality and yet far enough away to make it seem just fictional enough. This is a fine line to straddle folks and like Strawberry Wine straight from the vine it could be bitter or sweet. The writing here is divine and the characterisation, story & plot development are so strong which goes with this pacing and stellar interior artwork to create one of the most interesting stories without anything else like it on stands today.