Broken Frontier

For almost forty years, the CIA has been experimenting with psychics in an effort to evolve their intelligence programs. Called remote scanning, it started as a few men and women secluded in a room, tapping in and sketching locations and faces with rough charcoals. Today, it’s much more precise and chemically dangerous.

Writer J.T. Krul introduces us to a team of operatives enhanced with a drug called Cobalt Blue that allows them to tap into and amplify dormant psychic abilities with one hundred percent accuracy. Connor, Erika, Kaseem, and Isaac are the best at what they do, and what they do isn’t often pretty. Not recognized, acknowledged, or appreciated publically for their deeds, they’re America’s dirty little secret, destroying terrorist cells one by one and with extreme prejudice.

The premise is not all together new, but Krul infuses his characters and their plight with enough nuance and detail that it keeps us invested through the parts that are maybe more familiar. Even the team follows an archetypical format with one character that’s the tortured but quiet leader (psst, he’ll end up being the hero) and another that’s borderline sociopathic (hint, hin t- he and the hero will come to blows). Sure, it’s not completely unpredictable, but that’s not the point. These characters are fun to read. Maybe the rug will be pulled out from under us and shocking twists await, but even if they don’t, that’s okay. This is solid genre storytelling. No need to completely reinvent the wheel, just check the tire pressure from time to time.

The art by Alex Konat is wonderfully accomplished and visceral when the story requires it. It’s difficult to get a handle on his style, almost as if you put J. Scott Campbell, Darick Robertson, and Steve Dillon in a blender, finished it with lighter inks and topped it off with a realistic color palette. Needless to say, it’s a beautiful book. The blending of charcoal sketches and full colored inks in the same layout, depicting the early days of remote scanning, is a beautiful page that sets up a fun tone.

Each of the telepaths has their own style, which Konat and Krul have decided to make visually unique for each character. You have the older agent who uses sketches, one that visualizes his target as a human projector, while another can simply see through targets’ eyes.  They’re subtle touches that add to the whole of this package.

Having personally finding the previous work of Mr. Krul hit or miss, I can say that I was pleasantly surprised with my level of enjoyment in the issue. It’s fun, fast paced, and surprisingly possesses emotional resonance with key characters. The art is solid, the premise is familiar but ripe, and some genuinely interesting things are set up in this first issue. One can’t help but recommend giving this a shot, at the very least, on a light week when you want to try something else.