“Discovery”

Jonathan Hickman burst onto the comics scene last year with his miniseries The Nightly News, a Fight Club-esque look at the role of the media in American life. He followed it up recently with Pax Romana, another mini-series, this time about time travel and its religious and social effects. He’s definitely got some range, refusing to stick to the same type of story every time, and his comics also make for some fascinating reading, since his sense of design is pretty incredible, making for some very unique comics pages. But how well will he be able to do when collaborating with another creator? We get to find out here, in a mini-series that he is writing, with art from JM Ringuet.

This time around, Hickman is looking at genetic engineering and the creation of super-humans, from a corporate point of view. The book is presented as a sort of “mockumentary”, with characters speaking directly to the reader and telling the story of two rival scientists who were both trying to bring about the next step in human evolution. To tell the truth, I don’t know if this approach works for comics. A “host” narrates the story, as if he is a TV reporter talking to a camera. Other characters do the same when being interviewed, with the reporter’s questions appearing in speech balloons from off-panel. It’s an odd, static use of the comics format, consisting almost entirely of “talking heads” relaying the story to the reader instead of showing it to us. It’s probably an intentional violation of the “show, don’t tell” rule of storytelling, and I expect Hickman has plans for future subversion of expectations, but until future issues show up, all we have to go on is this installment, and it’s surprisingly non-dynamic, especially compared to Hickman’s previous work.

That said, it’s an interesting story that he’s telling here, with a colorful cast of characters and some interesting conflicts. Two rival scientists are both trying to create superhumans, but they take different approaches, with one focusing on genetic engineering and the other using technological modifications. Joining the fray are some venture capitalists and other scientists (two of whom used to be married, making for some obvious conflict). Really, this issue is mostly setup, introducing us to the conflict and characters and giving us a hint of what is to come. It’s interesting stuff, and there are a few pretty funny bits, especially a set of reports about some animal testing.

JM Ringuet’s art is quite a bit different from Hickman’s, but he does a good job of illustrating the script, bringing the characters to life in a gritty, somewhat rough style. He (or possibly she) draws characters with expressively cartoony flair, and some nice, dirty-looking coloring. For such a visually-flat issue, Ringuet makes it enjoyably readable by giving the characters, well, character.

So, while I’m interested to see where the story is going, I don’t think it’s as good as Hickman’s other work. Yet. I’m hoping future issues will turn me right around, but for now it’s merely an interesting idea waiting for some fleshing out.

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