Written by Ed Brisson
Art by Gavin Guidry
Published by Aftershock Comics
Released July 6th 2022
Warning: This article contains story spoilers for the first issue. Read at your own risk
What a great cover right?! Yes, I still really do judge books by their cover pretty often and this is because it's the artwork that pulls me in, not just the subject matter projected by that artwork. With comics however, you gotta open that book up if you like the cover art cause of course, the covers are often done by different artists than the interior. If you're the fashionable artist of the year or exceptionally in high demand, you can make an entire career off of just doing cover art. Fortunately for us and this particular book, the cover artist is also the artist for the story. I can't say I'm familiar with Gavin Guidry's previous works (Going to the Chapel, The Death Defying, Rebel, Medidata and some TMNT). They are all stories I have yet to read but I can say that based on what I saw in this book, I'd really like to check those out.
Writer Ed Brisson who's work I am very familiar with. I've talked about his work in past videos and articles (Famous for a slew of marvel books most notably Old Man Logan & Dead Man Logan, Dawn of X and some great creator owned books like Sheltered). This particular story takes place in Halifax, Nova Scotia, coincidentally the city we both reside in. I was thrilled to see actual Halifax locations in the pages of this comic. The downtown police station looking exactly as it looks here. The QEII Hospital and even an old hotel out in Bedford, which is another part of what we call the HRM, the Halifax Regional Municipality. And hey there's even a Tim Hortons in this book cause pre-covid, it really felt like there was one on every corner. There practically is.
Of course, admiring the likeness of my own environment on paper, doesn't tell you what the story is about. Truthfully, from the set up of this particular book, all I can surmise is that this is about super powers... and murder & crime. It wouldn't be fun if the story didn't hold some decapitations and crime. I think we're all much more fond of super power stories that have some grit and gore. I know I am. I read less and less Marvel comics lately as so many of them are just a bit too squeaky clean for my terribly corrupted and corruptible brain.
This first issue is great. I can honestly say I have zero criticisms or problems with it. It sets up the story properly. We know that something odd is afoot. We find out that our protagonist Patrick Todd is basically using other people to steal money in order to take care of his infirm mother. We find out that someone has it out for him although we don't know who! There's just enough mystery to leave us wanting. We're introduced to our antagonist Detective Anderson (some matrix nod there?) who comes across as a fine dude who's just trying to solve some crime. All in all, this story feels a bit like an anti-hero story as the people Patrick chooses to commit his money-driven crimes, happen to be criminals themselves. We're not entire sure how Patrick knows this though. He's choosing to use bad people as his tools to rob banks so in his mind he's doing a little public service. Vigilantism is frowned on by the law so that makes the story more fun, I mean who doesn't love a good vigilante story?! All in all, really good set-up for the series.
Something else fun about this first issue is that there's a little embellishment at the end of the issue where we see some police reports and medical reports which all talk about real places in Halifax. This adds a feeling of authenticity to the story that I really like.
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