I love a good action scene, and a good conspiracy, and the first issue of Reload serves up both. The high concept centers around a Presidential assassination, but it quickly becomes clear that Ellis is wandering one of his old playgrounds, the notion of political corruption and conspiracy, and that makes it considerably more interesting. This first issue is largely devoted to the big action sequence, however, and while Ellis seems to be doing a lot of those lately, taking some of his exquisite dialogue off the page to a large extent, he has compensated by choosing to work with some phenomenally talented artists, and Gulacy and Palmiotti create a beautiful and fast-paced scene of carnage and explosions to open up the story.
This is very clearly meant as a "movie on paper." The staging of the issue reads like the opening scene in a film, as we're introduced to our protagonist and told that his life was about to change in a different way, and then there's the big shocker of an opening. The antagonist for the series, or at least the physical antagonist, is also given her introduction, and she is a complete badass. Gulacy and Palmiotti have her dropping bombs, using technology to blind her opponents and running down walls with two guns like something out of The Matrix.
While I'm not as enamored of Ellis's more recent work the way I was of some of his earlier work on Stormwatch, The Authority or Transmetropolitan, there can be no doubt that his writing skills haven't dulled a bit. It takes a good writer to deliver killer dialogue and imaginative characters, but it usually takes an experienced writer to realize when to shut up and trust his artists, and that's what Ellis does for much of this issue. While a great deal of the choreography no doubt comes from his script, for the most part this opening issue is the Gulacy and Palmiotti show.
And it is quite a show. There's a lot explained through visuals, whether it's seeing her push buttons on detonators to bombs she clearly planted earlier, getting an establishing shot of her high-tech boots that let her defy gravity or seeing the Presidential kill-shot in slow motion. Our antagonist is pretty laconic, speaking only a couple words to herself throughout the whole of the issue, but her actions give her characterization, and it's easy to infer most of what we need to know about the character.
While the first issue of Reload is mostly about the action, there are hints toward the tail end that this is going to be more of a conspiracy book, and while that's not new territory for Ellis, it's certainly interesting enough to merit further exploration. In addition, the three issue format, while it can be overly constrictive, does force the creators into not going off on too many tangents, which should help avoid the common failing of conspiracy stories seen in X-Files or Incredible Hulk, as the conspiracy grows so large that it begins to contradict itself and doesn't ever have any revelations.
