4 out of 5

The title is fitting.  From the get, ‘Play’ is pretty visceral.  There are violent books, and there are gore books, but our setup for issue one – which has one old dude with electrical-based powers torturing another old dude with electrical-based powers – hits an unsettling tone, with our lead – the torturer – stating his intent to elicit the location of his daughter from the tortured, also seemingly enjoying the bloodspray.  The title grounds us amidst the sadism with its subplots, which handle the moral greyness of government without subtlety, but also without the easy mocking tone most books adapt; in flashback, the scientist in charge of imbuing soldiers with these electrical powers, Dr. Mazur, is mad, and the Colonel checking on his progress, is cold and governmenty, but both men seem human.

This uneasy balancing act plays out throughout the series: we’re shown more subjects of ‘The Mazur Project,’ and writer Arnott explores the effects of such experimentation on two fronts: lead guy Frank’s quest for his daughter – which could almost be taken as a twisted play on the recent old-man-revenge flicks like Taken, as you’re not exactly sure if you’re rooting for Frank – and what we see of an upcoming generation of powered kids.  At any moment, it seems like the book is going to drop into parody, and there are certainly darkly comedic moments, but Arnott holds the line, which makes the bleakness of the ending absolutely fitting.

Alex Cormack’s art is interesting.  Bliss On Tap’s colors and printing quality aren’t great, so it looks like an indie book, but Cormack brings a nervy verve to his pages, plenty of very liney chaos that reads well, though his panel layout can get cluttered.  His characters have a lot of personality, but I wonder if this wouldn’t have looked better had Cormack known he was working in black and white; the digital effects dirty up his pages, and it might’ve required him to work a bit more details in to clue us in to the age of the leads, who are supposed to be grandparents but for beards and white hair and suspenders, you can’t really tell.  Also, accepting that it’s a one-man art act… the lettering is pretty bad.  The way Alex lets bubbles drift over parts of his art and panels is random, and realigning the text to match the action works selectively but just feels off when there are letters going in all different directions on the page.

But anyhow, this is one of those promising underground titles that has underdog charm and sticks the landing.  The theme of abuse-of-power of government run operations ain’t a new one, which makes it all the more satisfying when a writer can step up and deliver a fresh pitch on it.