I was a big fan of DeFilippis, Weir and Hurtt's initial mini for Oni Press, Skinwalker, but I think Three Strikes is actually better. Regular readers (oh, hell, casual readers, too) probably know that my politics tend toward the liberal, but when it comes to crime stuff, I tend to be a little more right-leaning... so I was surprised that DeFilippis and Weir so easily won me over to the side of three-time criminal Rey Quintana, one of the protagonists of Three Strikes. Instead of setting up a right or wrong situation, DeFilippis and Weir spin a tangled web of moral responsibility and slippery slopes with a very realistic and gray morality. The result is a very complex and engaging read that is impossible to predict, and one where the shocks and surprises resonate because of the strong characterization of Rey, the bounty hunter chasing him and all the other characters involved in the story.
Three Strikes gets moving fast and doesn't stop, but it's not a roller-coaster action ride. While the creators have a couple of tense action sequences, the majority of the tension comes from conflicting personalities and from within the reader's own head, as we try to sort out just who we're rooting for. Should Rey Quintana get away or do we want Noah to catch him? Is Rey escaping an unjust system or fleeing from his responsibilities? Even as things go from bad to worse from Rey, and the downward slide of his life seems to become inevitably tragic, it's hard not to feel bad for what's happened to him, because we remember the place that he started the series at.
Actually, what most impresses me about Three Strikes, on top of the writers being able to juggle so many legal and moral issues without sugar-coating anyone's bad choices, is the strong characters. Rey and Noah are the leads, and are both fascinating characters, forced by circumstance into somewhat joyless lives and just trying to get by as best they can. The two are mirror images in some ways, when you contrast Rey's optimism with Noah's cynicism or Rey's sense of responsibility with Noah's more selfish point-of-view, but they make an interesting pair of protagonists because they're both being driven by unfortunate choices in their past and all-too-slowly learning what to do to improve their circumstances in the future. I was also impressed that Billy, Rey's criminally-oriented friend, got fleshed out in later issues, as his loyalty to his friend outweighs his more sleazy criminal nature at times, and I love the portrayal of the women in Noah's life. I especially enjoyed the somewhat underplayed burgeoning romance between Noah and Ms. Evans, which never pays off since it's a sideline to the main story but provides a nice undercurrent to their story.
Brian Hurtt's work on Three Strikes is fantastic, a step above the already good work he'd done on Skinwalker and Queen & Country. His character designs are crucial to the success of the writers in bringing these characters to life, in particular the work he does on Rey Quintana and Noah Conway, both of whom have the look of character actors you just can't put your finger on. Rather than likeness casting, as many artists do these days, Hurtt creates new looks that evoke classic archetypes, so that Noah reminds you of grizzled 50-some actors or Rey a 20-something actor who has grown out of his brat pack years. He also does a great job of creating a sense of place, at his strongest when he's tackling smaller locales like Needles, California or the small homes of Conway or the Quintana family but also doing a pretty impressive splash of the Vegas strip.
Three Strikes is a somewhat dark book, an unflinching look at the consquences of actions and what can happen when things go wrong. There are no easy answers, no forced happy endings, to be found in this book. Instead, it's a book that explores a flaw in the absolutes of the justice system by putting a human face on the failures of that system, and it's a very effective and engaging tragedy as a result.
