I really enjoyed the first two issues of Small Gods, and then the book just sort of disappeared off my radar. Fortunately, Image is giving me (and all the other potential readers) a chance to catch up with this $10 trade collecting the first four issues. The first story arc concludes as strongly as it began, and not only is it a very solid character-driven story, Rand clearly has a big world set up to explore in Small Gods, looking at how psionics have changed the world in many ways, not just for the cops. For this particular volume, though, Small Gods is all about law enforcement interacting with psionic abilities. It is not, however, a story that relies on the science-fiction gimmick, but instead one immersed in the difficulties of enforcing the law and remaining within the law, of deciding to be a good cop even if it might have personal consequences. The lead story, focusing in on one specific precog, reads like a blend of the best elements of Minority Report and The Shield, and the grayscale artwork is gorgeous, good enough that even those who don't generally read black and white comics might be swayed.
Rand's take on psionic powers and how they would be looked on strikes me as very realistic. Sure, the whole notion of "humans don't use 85 to 90% of our brains" is an oft-repeated sci-fi fallacy (as I've heard it, we're not using that percentage of our brains at any given time, but it's not that there's a whole chunk of brain that goes unused), but that's fairly minor, especially since the scientific underpinnings are nowhere near as important as the sociological underpinnings. The notion that society would be so afraid of the privacy implications of telepathy that they would imprison those who wanted to use it to help is a sadly honest comment on human nature, and I love the splitting of hairs between telepathy and precognition and how it relates to law enforcement that seems so true to the way the law works as well. The world of Small Gods seems full of endless potential for stories, best seen in the ads for psychic services that help serve as chapter breaks, and Rand has cleverly added just a minor twist with far-reaching ramifications as opposed to throwing too many elements in and rendering the world recognizable.
While the psychic element is very important to the story that Rand is telling here, this is very much a cop drama as much as anything else. The disappointment that Owen feels when the job doesn't go right and his analytical view of the world, as portrayed in his narrative, tells us a lot about his life and his character. The same is true of the moral dilemma that faces him throughout, one that has been used in any number of cop stories. The bad guy has the law on his side, yet he's obviously a scumbag criminal. Is stepping outside the law justified, or does that make the hero just as bad as them? Rand doesn't offer up easy answers, and he presents reasonable arguments for both sides. Indeed, even the borderine illegalities of the "blue wall" that his fellow cops throw up for him have dangerous results, as all of his friends are dragged into the problem and he finds himself "owing" a female cop with a crush just in time to really screw up his personal life as well.
Rand's writing is complex in all the right ways, which means that he's thought through the speculative elements as well as the human nature factor of how people react, but without dumping so much information or so many characters on the reader that the story isn't clear to read. The cast of characters is maybe a little too expansive, but if you don't remember who all the other cops are, it doesn't really matter, all you need to get is that they're Owen's friends who stuck up for him. I love that while Owen is undeniably the protagonist, there are really fleshed out characters in his girlfriend, his partner and some of his fellow cops (especially Jodi) so that we feel like they have lives outside of their relationships to Owen. Sure, it's how Owen's life is screwing up theirs that the story focuses on, but there's a bigger sense of these characters as more than just supporting cast.
As much as Rand's scripts drag the reader into a world that feels so real, however, the artwork by Ferreyra helps to sell the notion of the world as well. His work here reminds me somewhat of the photo-realistic styles of Butch Guice or Greg Land, with an especially vivid sequence that shows Owen's "flash" of the bank robbery as a standout. What's all the more impressive is that he makes these characters so distinctive and believable without the aid of color, and the grayscale actually adds to the noir tone of the book in some respects. Beyond just a beautiful surface, though, Ferreyra really does some terrific character moments, from the nervous grin of the computer operator when he makes a faux pas to the close-in on Owen in the last page of issue one.
The main story here is the tale of Owen and his run-in with a telepath, but it's not the only story. The backup tale, "Outside the Box," is also collected here. It also focuses on law enforcement in the psychic world of Small Gods, but it's much more of an action/detective tale than a morality play like that of the lead story. There's an element of morality play to it, but not until the end, and the really interesting stuff is actually the action work, most notably the hit on the mob using telekinetically-controlled guns in the second chapter. Asara's artwork is much more sketchy than Ferreyra's, but it's great for the action sequences. The actual tale suffers from being told in such a compressed format originally, especially given the predictability of the central mystery and how it relates to our lead character, but it's still a solid enough backup tale. 9/10
