Broken Frontier

Jason M. Burns is a generous guy. The writer of typically high concept books, such as Gypsy Joe Jefferson and A Dummy’s Guide to Danger has started his own publishing company, Outlaw Entertainment. The first three OGNs from Outlaw are only $7.99, which considering all the books are over 100 pages long is pretty good value.

Well, that depends on the quality of the contents, but as for Praetorian, I can say it’s not bad. It’s not entirely original, though its concept suffers somewhat from being released after the DaVinci Code craze. Thankfully, Praetorian is far superior to Dan Brown’s book, though that’s not a difficult achievement. It also has hints of Highlander with its group of immortals battling each other for ultimate power, but is a more realistic and contemporary story.

It begins with Agent Kasandra Rodriquez in Oregon, fishing a headless body out of a canal. Discovering some ancient carvings on the torso, she visits Professor Julian to ascertain what the symbols mean. The Professor is a grey haired gentleman who appears to be a little cautious about the investigation. It turns out that the good prof has an impressive museum for an abode, and connections to a mysterious group called the Castra Praetoria. What that means is that he and three other snappy looking friends were generously given immortality by Jesus himself.

Julian and his mates are re-united to face the Judgment Killer who appears every few years and goes on a murder spree for his own gain. They plan to stop him with the Spear of Destiny, which for anyone who’s seen a documentary on Christ, or religious conspiracies, will know as the spear that pierced Christ’s side, and is sometimes used as a powerful weapon in adventure tales.

Praetorian does infuse elements of the horror and thriller genres well, with a bit of the supernatural and cop show stylings thrown in for good measure. Despite all these different elements, the story never seems anything but focused and streamlined. It also hops between the present and the time of Christ’s crucifixion without any awkwardness.

Dialogue is handled well throughout the issue and the relationships and characters are all very distinct. The banter between Kasandra and her male partner Petrillo is the kind of thing you’d see on a prime time cop series, and offers a welcome lighter touch than the dramatic flourishes sprinkled between the pages.

Ramon Espinosa’s cartoony art is in contrast to the seriousness of the subject matter, which some may find distracting. It reminded me of the fluid nature of Bart Sears’ pencils and is pleasant to look at. It certainly doesn’t look like anything else on the stands at the moment. The colouring is fantastic and layered and gives a subtle beauty to the art. The page designs and layouts could have used more variation, as there is a lot of talking in this book, and as it's dealing with immortal killers, blood flows freely, but never in a overly gruesome manner.

Most religion-reliant tales such as this rely heavily on fate, faith and bloodlines and Praetorian doesn’t stray too much from that, but is thankfully more focused on remaining an entertaining murder mystery about a serial killer, rather than getting all metaphysical. Its not entirely genre busting, and the motivation behind the murders isn’t exactly a revelation, but overall, Praetorian is a well constructed thriller and is pretty to look at to boot.