Broken Frontier

Reggie is a detective. He is also a statistician and he sees a pattern in the crime in his city. It is a pattern that goes back several years and he believes it all leads to who he refers to as "Suspect Zero." Unfortunately, no one believes him.

Destiny is your typical young African-American female living on the wrong side of town. Except she is smart, very smart. Smart like see your move three moves ahead of you Bobby Fisher smart. She is organizing her community and wants the cops out.

Get ready for a new kind of war.

Adam Freeman and Marc Bernadin blew me away last year with Wildstorm’s out of the blue The Highwaymen. It was what we want all action movies to be, filled with explosions, tension, good characterization, but mostly it was smart. No stranger to the political boiler plate there, with jabs at the current administration by making a long dead Bill Clinton the savior of the world or a military-industrial complex that had gotten so out of control it was literally making people into weapons of mas destruction.

This time the dynamic writing duo takes on a subject matter a little more down to earth. Violence in America’s inner city. The setting is that most famous location for such stories: Compton. Now making a fight between black urban kids and white police may seem a little stereotypical, but what is going on in this book is a little play on stereotypes.

Destiny is a sexy black woman who speaks one way to her troops and another way in her most private moments. She not only does the whole John Nash seeing patterns everywhere thing, she is smart enough to know that the people she is organizing won’t trust her if she talks like the "enemy". What’s more, this isn’t a black versus white thing, in the book it is a the system isn’t working, let’s make a new system. It is a scary call to arms that seems like it is around any corner of current inner tension in the United States. A divided country erupted into war once before, are we headed there again?

While the fanboys who read The Highwaymen know that the story was open ended and would love to see more, Freeman and Bernadin know that there is the possibility that they will never get to do issue two of this series. They pack as much as they possibly can into this one comic book. While the story presented is complete, you know there is more waiting to happen and this reader wants to read more soon.

Afua Richardson is a talent in her own right. Half Dead was the only other work I have seen by the upcoming artist. That Dabel Brothers/Marvel Graphic Novel sported some of the most eye catching art of last year and this book is no different. It plays on some of the same stereotypes that are hinted at in the script with a very graffiti stylized look. However, the blandness of the police station juxtaposes nicely to the bright and vibrant world that is Destiny’s neighborhood. There is an almost flash animated look to those scenes that brings it all to life. Add in some nifty page layouts and stunning action sequences and it all makes a very nice package.

Genius is one genius of a concept, mixing Numbers with Boyz In Da Hood and A Beautiful Mind into one familiar yet breathtakingly different comic. This is exciting heady stuff that ends too soon.