3 out of 5

That’s it?  I don’t mean that in a necessarily overly negative way, as I quite enjoyed Replica, but Jenkins does lay down quite a bit of story to slap a “Fin” onto issue 5.  Is there more?  If not, this is one of those stories that might’ve benefited from their being _less_.

For example, the presentation of the title’s “thing” – those replicas – is a bit underwhelming, when it should/does have so much more potential.  But perhaps I’m looking at it wrong – perhaps Replica is actually just the murder mystery it sometimes seems to want to be, and not a sci-fi comedy of cloning foibles.  …Except that it also radically sidesteps the mystery bits for a lot of clone focus, and then occasionally sidesteps both of those things to do some world-building of the species melting-pot-planet “The Transfer.”  And then it ends.

Going back to the clones, while they’re not pictured on issue 1’s cover, a flip-through of the pages and seeing the same character with slight variations and different numbers stamped on his forehead is, in combination with the title, enough of a hint to get the gist.  Instead of digging into this, though, Jenkins essentially has Trevor, our negative nancy lead character, stop his car in front of a cloning facilitly after lamenting the lack of good help for his job as a police officer, then walk out with fifty clones.  There’s no discussion about why we don’t see more clones in this world, or why it’s such a big deal that the machine malfunctions and spits out plenty more than the one clone that’s desired, it’s just Four Months Later and they’re _all_ cops.  Which is an acceptable jump cut for comedy, but we Four Months Later right into the murder mystery, so it’s like the joke never fully lands.

Trevor, though an asshole (and rather unreasonably so at times), is an entertaining host for festivities, and the political web Jenkins begins to weave is fun, thanks to the wide cast of colorful characters, both Trevor-clones and otherwise.  So Replica keeps us reading, sort of smiling, sort of taking itself seriously, and then not clearly finding its throughline or a conclusion by issue 5.

On the art tip, Andy Clarke is amazing as usual, and does a great job making the transfer and the races feel viable and real.  He also gets the timing, which Jenkins writes somewhat trickily with punctuations needed during heated conversations or action sequences.  And for issues 2 – 4, Dan Brown lays down some wonderfully varied colors, thankfully replacing Marcelo Maiolo on issue 1, whose flashier style was oddly matched with Jenkins more darkly comedic tone.

But brass tacks: if this really is the last issue of Replica, I can’t say it’s worth it.  In it’s current state, you’ve read these bits and pieces elsewhere.  More ideally, though, the series keeps going, and for a long enough while to allow Jenkins to show off the fruits of his labors of putting a lot of pieces into place in this initial arc.