Writer: Andy Diggle
Artist: Jock
Publisher: DC/Vertigo
In typical Andy Diggle style last issue left us hanging, big time. The Losers continues to be the first book I pluck off the pile to read and for the fourth time I wasn’t disappointed.
As I’ve said in the past Andy Diggle is a master of story structure and he never fails to take us on a roller coaster ride in his stories. This was definitely not an exception. Betrayal, action and a ‘High Noon’ style tension kept me gripped. As the issue expands we see the story from every character’s point of view except the one we’re really interested in and that is why we read on. Eventually we get the pay off and we move on to a bigger dangler for next time…good stuff.
I was chatting to Jock a while back about the influences that went into The Losers and the one thing that came across strongly from the original art and character designs was the original Oceans 11. Jock says that the direction has changed drastically since then but I’d argue against that. Diggle is a HUGE fan of technology and he really knows his stuff on armaments. I think that Andy’s combined the feel of Jock’s original sketches with his own interests to produce something more akin to the remake of Oceans 11, slick, hi-tech and action packed.
I’ve become very open minded to art styles over the last through years. I’ve become a huge fan of David Mack, Ben Templesmith and many others (of course there are still some artists working on major characters whose work I don’t enjoy as much as others…sorry) ultimately it depends on what works for the story. I don’t think that there is another artist who could do the job here as well as Jock. From the intimidating views up the barrel of a gun through the incredible use of shadows to produce atmosphere to the enormous double-paged spread explosion his work has it all.
Damn that’s sucky…who gives a shit, it’s what I feel.
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