4 out of 5

It came from nowhere, and I had no idea what it was supposed to be about.  With truly striking graphic design and an oblique narrative style that allowed me, as a reader, in just enough to feel engaged but not preached to or patronized, ‘Zero’ pretty immediately read like it would find a permanent spot in my reading list.  And it didn’t disappoint.  The only way the first arc misfires, actually, is when it opens itself up to the next ‘level’ of story in the last pages of #5 – confirming that the lead-in is rather purposefully without a ‘core,’ since Kot’s holding on to that until the end.

‘Zero’ starts with ‘agency’ agent Edward Zero as an old man, being confronted by an assassin – a kid – and asking the kid to hold up while he tells him a tale.  The tale takes up five issues, different eras from Zero’s life with the agency, as drawn by five different artists.  Instead of seeming like a quirk, the variation in styles – linked by a lean toward reality, each artist stylizing manners in their own ways, of course – actually helps to flourish the mysterious feel of the series, never quite giving you the comfort to settle and feel like you’re “seeing” the author and artist behind the work.  In other words, this is Edward Zero’s tale, and not Ales Kot writing the story of Ed, drawn by.. etc.  That being said, wise consideration was taken to sequence this appropriately.  Issue one – drawn by Michael Walsh, with a wonderfully stark Darwyn Cook-ish heavy hand – is in the midst of Zero’s career, showing him at his coldest, but also with some humanizing variations from plan, as he retrieves some tech for his taskers.  Issue 2 – Tradd Moore – jumps back to the agency’s training, starting when Zero (and others) are just children, sending him out on a kill mission around the same time.  Had this story been first, it would have endeared the character to us too much, and as he may not exactly be the focus (but rather something larger… about abuse of power…), that would have been undesirable.  Issue 3, Mateus Santolouco, gives us another mission, and another variation, this time giving us even more indication that Zero’s morals may be overtaking his programming.  Issue 4, the delightfully grotesquely mottled art of Morgan Jeske, is a brutal turning point, Zero confronting a ‘retired’ senior agency member – involved in his upbringing – who has turned on his once-employers.  And issue 5 is drawn with appropriate minimalism by Will Tempest, picking up a little after 4’s tussle, with Zero being exposed to a something something something behind the scenes… that will eventually bring him to the point of being an old man, about to be assassinated by a kid from the agency.

Jordie Bellaire gives each book an amazingly discordant color palette, and Clayton Cowles’ lettering, while staying consistently styled, is pretty pitch-perfect in presentation, always given enough space for emphasis but never obscuring the emotions in a panel.  But, of course, Tom Muller’s design deserves its separate credit in each issue, as the unique look of the series is what drew me in.  Thankfully, it works in concert with the story and isn’t just pretty packaging.

So for as interesting and odd as the world Ales Kot has created is, our first arc in Zero can’t help but feel slightly empty, as it seems mostly like setup.  However, perhaps the next arc will solidify some of the themes being built in here, making the overall tale fully necessary.  But either way the issues are an achievement, a perfect example of juggling potentially complicated concepts – The Agency, secret ops – without over-doing the world-building, but seeding enough into each issue to evolve the story and it’s characters.

Who knows what’s next.  ?