3 out of 5

Covers season 1

A black n’ white murder futuristic murder mystery, Pax Arena is pretty light on the mystery and has couple odd fixtures at its center – our lead character, a cop, who seems to be the only one convinced of a particular character’s guilt, doesn’t appear to be the most intelligent or capable officer, and the scripts make use of her jacket for a couple gags, which is capable of displaying neon words that she punches into a little control.  This is the only color in the strip.  One of the bits using the jacket made me chuckle, but otherwise its like light-up sneakers – pretty duffin’ pointless – and doesn’t seem to serve much reason in the story.

The main ‘mystery’ is a bit clunky but interesting.  There exists a way for prisoners to lessen their sentence – fighting.  The loser dies, so instant out, the winner gets the reprieve.  A match takes place and one participant is, by design, slaughtered.  Unfortunately in this case, The Slaughtered wasn’t who it was supposed to be.  Someone slipped an innocent man in there.  Why?  How?  And Pax Arena makes good on some procedural interviews for the first issue or two, but as soon as the main baddie is fingered, we set aside any policing for bold accusations.

Still, it’s very enjoyable and very readable.  Geoffo’s stark black and white art (which is like a less angry, slightly more cartoonish Frank Miller) looks great and there’s quirky, identifiable character design (Mink’s scribbled mouth is particularly cool), but the action takes a bit of puzzling to understand, and the use of the digital format is so-so, the panel by panel reveal not really adding much.  The story might suffer from translation, but it never really picks up.  Thankfully, though, this takes mostly a backseat to character interactions, which feel consistent and satisfying.

Nothin’ wacky, but Pax Arena could develop into a nice lil’ word of light sci-fi if it can find a better tone for its stories.