Broken Frontier

Eric Westfall left the spy game but now he’s being called in for one last mission to track down a rogue agent. He shares a past with this woman...a past not as dead as he thought.

Boom! Studios continues its mission to bring diversity to the comic book market by focusing on other genre stories. With Left on Mission, writer Chip Mosher brings a brutal spy story with surprisingly emotional and lyrical underpinnings.

Eric Westfall got out of the black ops espionage business while he still could. Now he is married with a wife and an infant son, living a quiet life of leisure. That quiet is interrupted, though, when his former employers ask him for one last favor...one last mission. It seems one of their agents has gone rogue, stealing a laptop computer with a hard drive full of names of covers of agents in the field. This laptop is due to be sold to the Russian Mafia unless Eric can stop the rogue. This may prove more difficult than even he expects since the rogue agent is his former lover. Eric left the game with most of his soul intact – will this last mission take what he has left?

Mosher starts an amazing story with this issue. The main character of Eric Westfall is likeable despite a loose moral code about killing and torture. Readers can see that he has tried to change with his new life and put aside his old ways but upon being back in the field he slides back into his old habits with ease. There is a definite sense that a part of him, however, is fighting against those darker duties. Although the pace is slow it is deliberate and moody. There is almost a sense of Greek tragedy surrounding the issue with a feeling of marching steadily and inexorable towards a confrontation that will end in pain for someone. Can Eric escape this? Can he change fate? The reader is drawn in by these questions and possibilities.

The moodiness of the tale is aided by the stellar work by artist Franceso Francavilla. Francavilla has a talent for detail, setting, and background. He plays with light, dark, and all the shades in between, using them to illuminate and humanize the drama. He also manages an incredible series of panels that are brutal not by what is shown but by what is unseen and left up to readers’ imagination.

It would be remiss not to mention the fantastic color work done on this issue by Martin Thomas as well. With much of the story set in Havana, Cuba, Thomas perfectly captures the bright colors of the Caribbean and the sun-bleached, warm tones of the buildings. He contrasts this brighter setting against a drab opening in the United States – almost implying that the characters only truly come to life once they are on duty.

Left on Mission is a complex espionage tale with an engaging, emotional center that addicts the reader almost instantly. There is plenty of action here but it is Westfall’s personal dilemma that captures the heart and the head. This comic is smart and melancholic...when was the last time you read a spy story that did that?