More hints of the grand plan.
Creative Staff:
Story: Warren Ellis
Art: Jason Howard
What They Say:
Eligia, girlfriend and decoration to the local fascist gang leader, hunts the streets of Cefalu for the old man who pulled the knife on her. What she finds will either kill her dead or cure her heart…or both.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The advantage of working a novel style approach to a series like this is that we get a lot of different views, locales and situations to view the grand plan through as it eventually comes to light. The downside is that it can take a bit to get there, though often with a lot better foundation to it all when it does hit. It’s also lightly problematic, on a month to month basis, in that you get an issue without characters that you want to know about in it. But it forces you to really examine the characters at hand and see how they’ll factor into things, making you more interested in them than you would expect. I liked the focus in the first two issues on the Norway science team, but this installment has me far more interested in the Cefalu storyline than I expected to be.
This storyline proves to be the dominant one here, though thankfully Tito is kept out of it outside of a few mentions. What it wants to focus on is that of Eligia, his trophy girlfriend that had an encounter with a mysterious man that disappeared before she could really confront him. We see him wandering the streets of the city here, where he’s known as a professor and has a multilingual aspect about him that raises its own questions. Eligia catches sight of him and follows him throughout until he ends up in a ramshackle house out in the countryside. Her confrontation with him is fascinating to watch unfold, from his talk about why older men like younger women to his plain question about whether she wants to learn from him. He’s figured her out easily enough, not that it’s hard, but he’s still quite a mystery. He knows something of what’s to come and sees her as what may be a potential tool in this new world. But his talk of fixing things when it comes to past mistakes also resonates and you have to wonder what deeper story there is there.
Eligia really does become well fleshed out here throughout the issue, first with her encounter with Davide, one of Tito’s lackeys that she’s seen through easily, and with how she approaches things with the professor, realizing that there is far more to him than she expected at first. Similar ideas come from the China based storyline, where we reconnect with Tian as he’s spent his time since arriving there doing his artwork. Except that he’s done it all from the window of his room rather than getting down into the streets. That has Zhen, the woman from down the hall that he glimpsed earlier, coming to coax him outside and see the city. She’s a bit blunt at times but also careful at others in getting him to get out there, though her reasons for it aren’t clear at this stage. But there’s something about this protectorate that they’ve set up that leaves you wanting more, even if Tian’s piece in this issue is little more than a tease overall.
In Summary:
The focus on Eligia here isn’t exactly a surprise, as you knew she would be fleshed out, but she’s a curious choice for this early on. In a way, that speaks of her being a more critical piece of the storyline as we’re establishing early her potential for surviving what’s to come and likely playing a key role in it all. She’s not exactly subtle in what she’s doing in following the professor, but the results work well she she confronts him and gets anything but what she expected from him. He’s the most curious of the cast so far, the most observant of them as well, and I want to know more about his own past and what’s going on there. Tian’s story here doesn’t offer too much, but it tantalizes us with seeing more of the protectorate and that has me interested to see what’s going on in there. And Zhen could be an interesting piece of the puzzle as well.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 17+
Released By: Image Comics
Release Date: July 23rd, 2014
MSRP: $2.99
