Titan Comics 2019
Written by Simon Kansara
Illustrated by Horne
Watch_Dogs goes global, in part two of this fully-canonical thriller exploring the cybercrime world of Ubisoft's record-breaking hacktivist video game series! Hacker Sauda discovers the true scale of the corruption enveloping her home, but finds a helping hand in a group known as Dedsec...
So last issue we were introduced to life in Rio and how the Flavelas really worked. Also Sauda's brother turned on her, believing she was the enemy which sent her off to jail. Now it's four years later and Sauda's life is once again about to get a lot more complicated and dare I say interesting. The opening here is great and it definitely has that right amount of drama and intrigue to pull the reader in and leave wanting to know more. If you read last issue then this is a automatic read however if you missed last issue and are picking this up for the first time then that's okay as it is easy enough to follow, see new reader friendly.
I like the way that this story is being told, the structure is nice and strong as we see the story & plot development and the character development keep unfolding before our eyes. The pacing picks it all up and carries through to the end at a nice clip but doesn't make anything feel rushed or glossed over. There is another aspect of this that I really am enjoying as well and that is the fact that you don't have to play the video game or even be aware of it and what it's about to be totally into and digging this story.
That it was placed in Rio isn't a surprise as it's one of those cities where you have the tourist traps and those with the wealth right there and the the rest of the place is nothing but ghetto's, slums that are full of drug dealers and the downtrodden. If there ever were a high profile city that hacktivism was to be spotlighted it should be here. For me this is where grass roots activism has a greater impact on the local populace, only in American films do they target the rich businesses of the states. So with a plethora of believable characters and a scenario that is completely within the realm of the possible it makes what we see here blur the lines between what can be and what is fiction.
I am a fan of the interior artwork here as well. I like the linework and how we see it applied through the varying weights and how it's creating this attention to detail. The style is gorgeous and the way that we see the composition inside the panels and how we see depth perception through the utilisation of backgrounds and foregrounds. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a great eye for storytelling. The colour work here is really nicely done as well. The use of light sources to create shading and shadows through the use of various hues and tones within colours is superbly done. The way this comes to life for us and how the various body types and shades of skin tones make this a diversely populated book based on more of a real life cross section.
This is a wonderful story of what people can do when they use the powers for good. And by that of course I mean hacking, collecting data and making sure that it's used responsibly so as to help the little guys and gals and not to line ones own pockets. A nice group of characters to support you and to keep you grounded does wonders and just the overall mood, tone and feel of what we see here is done beautifully. Titan Comics is home to m truly great storytelling taken from various sources around the media world.