The pre-credits roll.
Creative Staff:
Story: Ray Fawkes
Art: Marco Failla
Colors: Stefani Rennee
What They Say:
Meet the World’s Greatest Con Artists on the eve of the greatest scam in human history –ripping off the Gods themselves! The high-stakes, high-octane story of JACKPOT! begins here!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
One of the things that has been very appealing about the launch titles from AfterShock Comics is that they’re all pretty varied. While there’s consistency in really strong talent that’s producing the books, the books themselves are all varied and come across as passion projects. As I avoid reading about them ahead of time so that I can just go into it cold and experience it without any foreknowledge, it’s worked pretty well with what it wants to deliver. With Jackpot, my main draw to it was knowing that Ray Fawkes was writing it and I had just come off a fantastically character driven work of his with Gotham by Midnight, probably my favorite non-Batman Batman book of the last several years.
With Jackpot, what we essentially get is the pre-credits sequence of a movie here where we’re introduced to a range of characters and their specialties. Coming across as a real world based kind of story, it’s about a group of grifters that know exactly how to work a mark as they look to secure counterfeit bonds and a nice pouch of authentic diamonds from a pretty bad man that likes to gamble. The book works the game well while showing the rest of the team as they work their skill set, from the muscle that watches from a distance, ready to step in and kill whenever necessary, to the thief herself with all the right intel and moves to get into the safe. Add in a dirty dealer type, the actual gambler, and then a pretty craft jack of all trades type and there’s a solid group that comes into play.
The problem is that as it takes up the entire first issue to see them play the game and reveal the tricks, there’s little here beyond that. Fawkes hits us with the characters basics and a hint or two of personality, but nothing really shines through. At some points I wasn’t even sure which would end up being the main characters and which were simply expendable for the moment. There’s supposedly a bigger story at play going by how it’s being sold – ripping off the gods and getting an end page or two that shows a mysterious group watching all of this to acquire one of the players – but that just reinforces that it may not be worth investing in anyone beyond that one characters. All of it just gives the whole thing a kind of superficial feeling that keeps me from feeling like I can – or should – engage with it.
In Summary:
Jackpot works a familiar feeling that you see with any number of heist movies or novels in how the opening chapter plays out and it does do it well enough. Fawke’s scripting and pacing feels a little off with the quick back and forth early on and I really detested the large lettering used to introduce the team as it just made this seem even more like it’s simply a storyboard for a movie. Failla’s artwork is decent enough but some of the angles and fluidity of the action from scene to scene left me a little cool for the most part. It’s the kind of book that likely has a solid concept behind it and a bigger plan to work with, but the opening installment doesn’t provide enough of a hook in any of the main areas it needs to, from writing to artwork to actual plot itself. And with characters that I’m not feeling like I should engage with, it’s a book that I’ll check out down the line depending on how future issues are received.
Grade: C
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: AfterShock Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: April 13th, 2016
MSRP: $1.99
