4 out of 5

Because each issue of this mini-series has a different creative team, I was definitely expecting it to be an anthology.  That wasn’t the case, which just sort of bums me out that Rennie (and artists Phil Hester and Ande Parks) didn’t get to finish the whole thing, because the first issue was one of the first not-just-okay-but-actually-pretty-gripping handlings of one of these Species / Predator / Alien comics I’ve read.

The plot is mostly what you’d expect – another company creates another Species alien, this time male and codenamed Kal, and wouldn’t ya know it’s as bad an idea this time as it was before and it escapes again – but Rennie lays it all out with an effectively terse pitter-patter (from the POV of a CDC agent tracking the alien’s spread like a virus), and Hester, whose chunky artwork I haven’t previously cared for, ends up perfectly balancing the violence with the cold narrative.  While the logic behind Kal’s methods is a little murky, that this has instantly become a threat to the human race is made very apparent, and throttles us through the 20something pages to a conclusion that certainly leaves us wondering what’s to come.

(…Though not enough to make me seek out the other non-Rennie issues, but oh well.)