Broken Frontier

An undercover cop becomes a criminal to catch another cop gone bad. Once she pulls the trigger, there’s nowhere to go but down. Does she have any chance of coming back up?

The only way Detective Deanna Ransome can save her career is by crossing the line. Her assignment—bring down Nick Rivers, a former undercover cop gone so native that he’s now at the top of a narcotics empire. Trust is more rare than gold in the underworld, and Ransome must prove that she’s down to gain entrée into that realm. Her first hurdle is Paul Sorrell, Nick Rivers’ right hand man, whom she meets at a restaurant in search of enforcer work on referral from the now dead Bad Mickey. Sorrell’s right hand man is Tommy Silk. He’s distrustful but doesn’t know that Ransome is there to audition for his job. He gets the picture, though, when Ransome tells Sorrell that someone within the organization sold Bad Mickey out. Then Tommy gets a fork—in the jugular—when she fingers him as the traitor. But Ransome’s display only gets her so far. To seal the deal with Sorrell, Ransome has to take on four dirty cops who’ve come to finish what Tommy started. If she can deal with the situation, she’s in. But once she gets in, can she get out?

With Down, Warren Ellis wants to adapt the Authority style to crime fiction—in his words: "berserkly operatic, massively decompressed storytelling." The filmic equivalents would be Heat and Hard Boiled." Decompression and crime fiction seem an odd mix, as American crime-fiction, in film and on paper, tends towards compression and tight pacing. However, thus far Ellis’ experiment is paying off. At its core, decompression is about collapsing the gutter, making the "time" between panels as close to "real time" as possible. The number of pages between plot points increases, but when done well we barely notice it. The reading experience is more cinematic than "comic booky," as the writer has more space to wring discreet moments for all the tension and drama they’re worth.

Down #2 is an excellent example of this. In the way that Desolation Jones evokes The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep, Down taps a vein straight to The Heart of Darkness. Already we see Ransome, morally compromised enough to be given this particular assignment, compromised even further as she takes her first steps in finding Rivers. How far will she go to get the job done? Will she end up going native just as Rivers has? Even if she’s successful and Rivers goes down, can she simply walk away? And what if she herself is being played? What if this mission isn’t at all what it appears to be? From first page to last, the reader feels that things can go sideways all too quickly for Ransome, and Ellis makes her compelling by instantly throwing her into an ends-justifies-the-means situation beyond which there’s no looking back. In addition to sharp dialogue, Ellis accentuates this tension with nimble, elegant plotting, intercutting the real-time elements of the story with flashbacks of Ransome and Lieutenant Price as he briefs her on what needs to be done at the meet with Sorrell. Written chronologically, the flashback would only be set-up, but in mixing them Ellis plays one off the other, such that the exposition reads like an integral part of the narrative. The result of such skillful use of simple tools is, in particular, a powerful moment when one of the cops recognizes Ransome, and overall a thoroughly entertaining, if gut-wrenching read.

Tony Harris’ artwork in Down #1 is amazing, and his issue #2 cover lets us know that Ransome is not to be f***ed with, while also capturing an alluring femininity that’s as dangerous as the balls it takes to fire a gun. Following Harris, Cully Hamner has some big shoes to fill where the interior art is concerned. Fortunately, Hamner’s style, while different, still works in such a way that the story doesn’t miss a beat. Whereas Harris’ lines are looser, more fluid, Hamner’s are tight and angular, perhaps lacking Harris’ texture and expressiveness, but still maintaining the level of tension that the narrative needs. Harris’ work focuses more on setting the morally ambiguous tone of the story, but Hamner’s clean, economical panel constructions emphasize the immediacy of the moment. Consequently, with Ellis’ script giving him room to breathe, he cranks out intense and brutal action sequences, gorgeously colored by J. D. Mettler. Harris has a bit of an edge, but I’d also like to see more of Hamner’s art as the series progresses.

It’s been a busy 2005 for Warren Ellis. For the man who made it a household word, Down is decompression done right.