This has a solid creative team and an interesting concept, but the experimental storytelling method just isn't working for the rather straightforward material. Instead of using the comic-book format, the team is using beautiful illustrations by Jay Anacleto and different captions for different voices written by Haberlin, a sort of illustrated text with a twist. The problem is, this is kind of like doing a big-budget action movie by using flip cards or writing a tense political thriller in iambic pentameter. Nothing's wrong with the idea or the method, but they're not suited to one another. Athena Inc. could be a fast-paced action thriller with interesting psychological undertones if done as a comic, but instead its an exercise in frustration as the reader tries to piece together what Haberlin and Anacleto want us to see.
Anacleto's work on the book is nothing short of gorgeous, and it's his photo-realistic artwork that remains the strong point of the book. If you ignore that there's supposed to be a story and just look at the images, this is a pretty solid read, with some stirring and grotesque images as well as perfect anatomy that is rarely seen in comics. I'm also quite impressed by Anacleto's colors, which tend toward single shades and have a look as distinctive as his linework.
Unfortunately, as a storyteller, Anacleto's work falls far short. We get snapshots that occasionally have meaning, but they don't piece together terribly well. I get a general sense of what's going on, but I'm kept at such a distance from the story that I never feel any connection to the story. There's riveting stuff here, including a secret agent taking on three highly-trained assassins and murdering an assassin on a plane, as well as discovering a message from her submerged personality scrawled on a bathroom mirror, and yet I never feel any emotional ramifications from it. My heart isn't racing during the action scenes, my mind isn't a little shaken by the horrific after-effects of the violence and I feel no sympathy for the terrible position that Gwen is in, living with a psychotic personality inside her head. The format is constantly reminding me that it's only a story, instead of drawing me in.
Of course, the blame for this does not fall entirely on Anacleto's shoulders. Haberlin sprinkles the book liberally with text, including a variety of nonsensical "strategy" notes and a full page of quotes that don't really connect. Presumably, these are meant to create a mood, but all they wind up doing is adding extraneous bits of text in a story that is already not very clear. The biggest problem, though, is in the action scenes, when the dialogue between the characters seems too dry and mundane to give us any real sense of a big martial arts fight and shooutout going on.
This book frustrates me, because I think that if the creators took a more straightforward approach to the storytelling, they'd have one hell of a great story on their hands. They've mixed elements of La Femme Nakita and Dark Angel into a perfect vehicle for action and conspiracy stories, but they're squandering it with a format that could not be more wrong for the material.
