3 out of 5

A noteworthy indie that’s only just slightly off the mark in terms of both visual and tonal focus. “The Immortal” concerns Z, apparently the last human, and operating in a business of bounty hunters – a mixed bag of desk jockeys, taskrabbits, and killers.

In issue #1, Z tracked down a bounty, was killed, regenerated, tracked down the bounty again, was killed again, and now we’re at the beginning of another regeneration – this tech-granted ability giving the book its title. But instead of repeating the same mistake, Z decides to go the opposite direction, and find out more about the source of the bounty, only for the info to essentially be redacted. But it can at least be traced to the planet Yuganor, and off we go… with some trials and tribulations involving other bounty hunters and an alien zoo taking up this issue’s hijinx.

Writer / artist Darryl Knickrehm does a good job of building in a lot of sci-fi lore without cluttering up the narrative too much, and keeps Z’ bouncing from moment to moment – the book, which is a prestige-ish length – never slows. But the tone kind of bounces back and forth between harmlessly goofy and something more serious, and that’s coded into the concepts as well: it’s hard to figure out whether or not there are actually any stakes, with a lot of these concepts feeding themselves – regeneration moderately affects memory; I’m not clear if there’s a real reason to track down the bounty’s source except curiosity… and the resolution of some of the hijinx underline this, as events are moreso plotty speedbumps than anything really relevant to, I guess, solving the “mystery” of why Z was sent out on this bounty in the first place.

And the art has this mix as well: working in a slightly undersized format, and perhaps in order to stay on schedule with the extra pages, Knickrehm is very choosy with what gets details and when, leading to some Archie Comics-style completely empty backgrounds, and a mix of when foreground characters are done up realistically vs a more low-res style of no shading, and less linework. Again, this tends to split the look: sometimes gritty, sometimes more comical.

But the book ultimately succeeds, for a couple key reasons: Knickrehm writes well, and he draws well. Many stories are distraction pieces – i.e. no real inherent “point” – and The Immortal’s runaround is more successfully distracting than a lot of Marvel and DC tend to be, and whether the look is grimmer or lighter, page layouts and character work are still solid. It’s just missing the tightening on tone, and maybe dialing up the sense of stakes in some way so there’s a more driving purpose behind things.

Sold in an undersized 5″ x 7″ format.