Two words drew me to this comic book: Igor Kordey. I didn't need to know anything else about it in order to plunk down the cash for the hefty cover price (though that it's published by IDW didn't hurt either). Kordey spent a couple of years as Marvel's go-to guy, the artist who could crank out the full art for a complete comic book in a hurry. And he did it well. He was unceremoniously dumped by the publisher, and I'm thrilled to see him land on his feet with a project that's better than just about anything he ever did for Marvel. The gravy is that his work is adorning a complex, challenging and bizarre tale of politics, finance and espionage.
In the not-too distant future, London, better known as the Big Smoke, has been divided into two areas: London proper, and the Walled City in Soho, to where the freaks and have-nots have been relegated. Rich men manipulate politicians and kill bankers in to become richer men, and the media turns a blind eye to everything but the canned news offered up by the powers that be. In the midst of the well-organized chaos, a good man -- a former spy and military commander -- is assassinated, and his protege -- Cain, a government assassin himself -- sets out to discover who killed his friend and why.
Kordey's work for Marvel often boasts a gritty, rough quality that often enhanced the tone of the stories he was telling. Here, it's easy to see that he can bring more detail and realism to his work when he has more time to craft his pages. I'm reminded of Steve (Preacher) Dillon's style a bit here, as well as that of Glenn (Neverwhere) Fabry. Kordey pours a lot of detail into the backgrounds in order to make this new vision of London more real, but at the same time, he's careful not to change it too much. There's still a sense that this is not far removed from the here and now. The character designs are striking and varied. There's no confusing one character for another. The action later on the book is intense, and Kordey maintains a nice balance between the oddball players and the more down-to-earth ones. My one qualm with the book is the cover design, which doesn't give one a sense of the complexity and drama/intrigue to be found within. On the other hand, it is a simple but striking design.
This is a spectacularly impressive effort from relative newcomer Alex de Campi. The extreme characters and political commentary remind me of the sort of thing one expects to see from Warren Ellis, but it's tempered with a grounded, emotional core. Cain's affection for the colonel and his daughter really took me by surprise. Cain is humanized quite well later in the book, and such connections make it a lot easier to relate to these intense characters.
Smoke is a British Farenheit 9/11 crossed with The Bourne Supremacy. De Campi's commentary on economic manipulation and media lethargy pack a particularly powerful impact given the dominant state of right-wing politics in the world's last remaining super-power. I like that the writer doesn't turn her attention directly to the United States, though. Setting the story in Britain adds a more cosmopolitan quality to the book and makes the important point that the Western world's ills don't lie solely on American soil. 10/10
