by Randy Lander

HUNTER KILLER #0-3 Image Comics/Top Cow Writer: Mark Waid Pencils: Marc Silvestri Inks: Joe Weems, Matt Banning, Eric Basaldua, Ryan Winn, Pat Aquino, Tom Bar Or Letters: Dennis Heisler & Troy Peteri Colors: Steve Firchow & John Starr Price: $2.99 US/$4.60 CAN (#0 is $0.25 US) The theme for the first reviews I published this week was "First Issues," but judging on this and my Firestorm review, maybe my secondary theme should be "Foolish expectations." See, I'm not generally a fan of Top Cow. The art style which is generally used there, from founder Silvestri on down, has never really been my thing, the characters like Darkness and Witchblade don't resonate with me no matter who you put on writing and the tendency of any books I'm actually interested in to get two issues in and then vanish from existence has irritated me more than once. So I pretty much gave Hunter-Killer a pass. When a set of #0-3 plus scriptbook showed up in my mail, though, I resolved to give them their fair shot, if nothing else because Mark Waid's writing usually does resonate with me. What I found was a book that does fall into some of the Top Cow house style cliches I don't like, but which overcomes that for the most part with sharp writing and a subversive quality that I quite like, not to mention an almost noir sensibility where you're never sure from moment to moment who the good guys and bad guys are, or if such terms even apply. In reading through the scriptbook, which has the original pitch and some of the refinements, it becomes clear that Hunter-Killer essentially began life as Cyberforce 2.0, in a lot of ways. However, the developments seen in the scriptbook and in the finished series make it clear that it's more like Top Cow's Rising Stars, with a little of the black ops moral ambiguity seen in Wildstorm's Sleeper. Hunter-Killer is an action-adventure book at its heart, but it does have a brain in there as well. One very clear theme of Hunter-Killer is the government's tendency to lie to its people, a timely theme to be sure, although it's depoliticized to a great degree because Waid is using generalities rather than specific lies from today. Hell, the fictional lie that is the big lie in this one comes from one of the most popular Democratic Presidents of all time, even if the way the Hunter-Killer squad now operates seems far more in line with our current administration. That, in a way, is also a key to what makes Hunter-Killer work. It's something that Waid points up early on in the development process (as catalogued in the scriptbook): The Black Ops who operate in secret is a cliche now. I'd argue it wasn't much better when Silvestri and Lee began using it as the backbone of their respective universes in the mid-'90s, but that's splitting hairs. At any rate, Hunter-Killer is not about a black ops unit with a secret agenda. It's about at least three separate and distinct groups or individuals with their own agendas. No one is clearly the bad guys, no one is clearly the good guys, and our point of view character, a young man named Ellis, isn't sure to trust any more than the reader is. There's a lot of material left below the surface, as the readers are left to wonder about the true motivations of the Wolf, the Hunter-Killer squad and, at one point, a rogue teleporter named Transporter, not to mention Ellis himself. However, for all that there's plenty of potential for future stories, Waid and Silvestri make sure to deliver some solid action and forward plot movement in each issue. I know I'm in the minority here, but Silvestri's art is not a selling point for me on this book, it's a point against. I loved Silvestri's early work on X-Men, but his stuff ever since founding Image has left me increasingly cold. When it comes to technology, he does fantastic stuff, and no one can accuse him of laying down on the job, because there's a ton of detail in his work, but the style just looks kind of ugly to me. His people in particular look bizarre and plastic, from the torpedo tits possessed by Samantha Argent to the heavily cross-hatched and lined faces that look like a modern day Clint Eastwood rather than the twenty-somethings they're supposed to be. I also think the designs for the tech tattoos, a cool idea from the start, are disappointing in execution, looking more like loose scribbles than the cool, sexy designs they're supposed to be. There are any number of things I like in the art from Silvestri and the rest of the crew, from the fadeout effects on the Wolf (credit a lot of that to the colorists) to the stuff that Silvestri excels at like the big explosions and monstrous-looking transformed Ultra-Sapiens, but the stiff expressions and elongated supermodel bodies on just about everyone fails to give the book a grounding in reality that it needs, visually. Some of the blame can be laid down on the multiple inkers (a half-dozen across four books), but mostly it's just a disconnect between my art sensibilities and Silvestri's art style. However, even though the art generally isn't my cup of tea, it's not a deal-killer. There's a story here worth following, and the art is solid enough in storytelling terms to keep up, which is really the bare minimum I ask. Fans of Silvestri's art are being rewarded with probably the strongest story he's worked on in a long, long time, so it's a win-win for the usual Top Cow fanbase, and a book worth looking at for those who don't fit that description. Assuming Hunter-Killer sticks around for the long haul, I'm definitely in to see where it's going. Email Randy Lander comments about this review.