This island life…
Creative Staff:
Story: Joe Harris
Art: Martin Morazzo
What They Say:
When a cache of Soviet-era nuclear warheads is discovered, Chas Worthington has to fend off plundering, modern-day pirates in order to prevent an all-out arms race!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While you can throw a lot of things at a new property and build organically from it, sometimes it just ends up feeling too crowded and rushed, especially when you have a slew of things you can do with the minimal bits already introduced. Great Pacific has an intriguing concept, but it’s brought in a mutated cephalopod, a group of locals that are basically acting like separatists in Chas’ eyes, a mysterious French pilot-pirate, the military, the business side, a friend and then a group of pirates. Chas’ attempt at taking over the trash that is this place as New Texas was going to be fraught with a lot of obstacles to be sure, but most of these just feel like odd choices that keeps us from getting to some very meaty material with it. But part of it is just me wishing for more of a novel approach to it in dealing with the real issues of it instead of what largely feels like fluff.
That said, we do get a lot of things covered here that can have a bigger impact in general. Now that Chas has been captured by the pirates thanks to Zoe’s help, he’s realizing that they’ve been after the nuclear side all along, though that deal has changed from what Zoe thought it was. There’s an interesting small back story to how it came to be there, and it is amusing to see Chas claiming territorial rights to it and other kinds of salvage rights. The pirates are all small thinkers overall, even their leader Kalk, and what you get from it isn’t anything that makes you think much of them other than muscle with a little bit of brains to them. So when things go south for them after Zoe tries to make her own play as she fears for her portion of the salvage, it ends up throwing her and Chas onto the same page again. Which isn’t bad since he does need to surround himself with capable people, and she apparently has some good research skills to say the least to discover this satellite that nobody knew about other than a few Russians.
Where this book takes another curious turn, one that feels hard to really get into, is a further examination of the apparent locals/natives that you’d think Chas would have had a real clue about in preparing for this. With them coming out of the blue, intent on killing Chas for the one of theirs that he killed, it turns the situation into several sides just trying to stay alive. Chas and Zoe end up aligned at this point, lightly at least, and captured by the natives and their Little Chieftain girl. She at least fills in some of the blanks of how these natives have operated over the decades and their origins, which could be an interesting all by itself as it dates back to World War II. But what we get here is just them acquiring power for themselves through the nukes, which is sending all sorts of red flags into orbital trackers that now have new and sudden nuclear movement in the world. Suffice to say, Chas’ place was already going to be the subject of great scrutiny. Now it’s going to be subject to some real military scrutiny in terms of wiping it out.
In Summary:
I’m still not sure of what the grand plan is for Great Pacific at this point. There are so many ways it can go but it seems to be digging into all of these odd little turns instead while drawing together to some point that will likely establish things more. But we’re also still not entirely cemented on what it is that Chas is truly after, since he has his HERO device and it feels like a game changer if the prototype can be made into something more. But even that feels like a throwaway plot at this point as it continues to focus on so many other things in different areas without a cohesive feeling. Though I can get into what Chas is trying to do based on what we know, there’s so many things in motion that just feel counter or unrelated to it all that it comes across as disractions. I’m curious to see how they unfold, but I’m feeling less invested with it as goes on simply because it feels like it’s missing the opportunity to do some grand and sweeping things here while still playing with the character well. I like characters with grand visions and plans, but you have to lay out some of it so that we can be invested in it, either to see him succeed or to see him fail. I’m still unsure of what Chas’ vision is here with New Texas and the HERO device.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Image Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: March 6th, 2013
MSRP: $2.99
