3 out of 5

Let’s get one thing straight: Kingdom is still awesome.  Gene the Hackman still rocks.  Abnett has stumbled on a character and concept that’s so cool that he could sort of write shit stories for the rest of time and I’d still maintain that.  And the two tales in ‘Call’ aren’t shit, they’re just a long bridge for Dan, trying to figure out how to make his character’s quest relevant again.  He’d written him into a corner that didn’t allow much direction, so first, in ‘Call of the Wild,’ he has to shed some baggage, and then second, in ‘His Master’s Voice,’ he has to point good ol’ Gene Dog in a new direction.  We get there, but it’s a bumpy ride that you wish would’ve taken more time at some points, and at other points will wish it had sped past some tourist traps (i.e. cliches, in this obnoxious extended metaphor).

Another thing to get straight: these are the arcs where Richard Elson really started to break out stylistically.  Perhaps it’s just time, perhaps its being able to offload color duties to Aibgail Ryder, who really gives the art a much more pulsing and aggressive look, but Gene and the other Aux and the world they inhabit just look fantastic: full of life and power, whereas previously, things occasionally felt a little bland and/or stiff.  Elson’s larger scale action scenes aren’t quite there (you more pick up what’s happened through context than the visuals), but his character sequences and close-up money shots of Gene unslinging his blades and slashing things are all part of that super cool vibe.  Bastards.

In ‘Wild,’ Gene and Leezee come across a pack of feral Aux and join their pack.  Dan plays up the manipulative leader-of-the-pack bit too obviously and too quickly, and though I get that Gene’s race functions by dog rules, the way female Aux Clara Bow just sort of flip-flops to Gene’s side feels rushed.  The “Wild Pack,” as they’re called, are otherwise such a fun cast of characters it’s a shame that the interaction is really just used as a vehicle to remove Leezee from the equation.  Which, overall, is a good thing, as otherwise Kingdom would fall into Lone Wolf and Cub territory, but there was a lot of potential for exploration here that we forcibly run away from, diddling instead in story cliches.  (Abnett gets to it eventually in the as-yet-uncollected Kingdom thrills that appeared in 2015 2000 AD, so, y’know, we’re on the right path…)

In ‘Voice,’ Dan sifts through the remaining tendrils of backhistory that led to the Aux, as Gene kinds another output with a remaining human, who’s intent on restarting the Aux vs. Them war, with Gene’s purebred genes as the kindling for a new Aux army.  The flashback setup is sort of disruptive, and everything from the flashback takes place “6 years before (an event),” which makes the structure even odder – like we keep taking breaks to just flash back on one particular day or week, essentially.  And Dan somewhat slips up with Gene’s character here, his dialogue maybe just a little too intelligent sounding.  But again, the story is due diligence: resolve some mysteries, and give Gene back some motivation to go on a walkabout.  Which happens.

So volume 2 feels a bit perfunctory versus the straight-up inspiration of volume 1, but it’s all for a good cause.  Of, y’know, keeping an incredibly awesome title alive and kicking.