Broken Frontier

The future is here! Flying cars, clones, superior technology…though it all comes with a price, and if you can’t pay, your s*** getting repossessed, mutha-******.

The creators of Teenagers From Mars and Dead West return, with their signature punk-youth flavorings and odd amalgamate of genres, this time blending the urban sci-fi/cyberpunk styles of Philip K. Dick and William Gibson with the more cult/mundane qualities of Repo Man. The book follows the current exploits of repossession duo K.D. (a middle-aged black man, schooled on, apparently, too many Shaft movies, replayed way too many times) and Gwan Li (otherwise known as Emil, an albino white boy, the whitest of the white, with the temperament of an old-school British punk). The book opens with the duo losing the repossession of a car due to said car being car-bombed, the culprits a so-called terrorist organization the CLA (Clone Liberation Army). Soon after, it’s announced that a clone is on the loose, having been sprung by the CLA, and the money offered for its repossession proves phenomenal. Every Repo man yet sucking air jumps into high gear, and the race is definitely on.

Ultimately, it’s a big disappointment to have the book turn so immediately to its sci-fi chase-sequence side. Where’s the repossession stuff? I mean, come on – even the opening sequence proves nothing more than an aborted attempt, finished and done before even started, tying into the main, more fantastical plot. Anyone interested because they’re looking to follow the misadventures of Repo men, this won’t be a book to satisfy. Anyone thinking repossession sounds god awfully boring but they might be interested should there be clones and gun-totting enemies and over-the-top fight-game versions of actual Repo men and lots of shee-ite getting blown to pretty smithereens, they ought to be pigs in a trough with Repo #1.

Repo isn’t the original, clever book that Teenagers From Mars was, though it certainly isn’t a departure from the creators’ characteristic panache, either. It reads like a 2000AD prog, exceedingly British in composition, execution, and feel. The political and social commentary involved is ridiculously unsubtle, fun if you’re open to it, though it offers nothing new to age-old issues of anti-establishment critique, and honestly it doesn’t really try. The point of the book, beyond the obvious surface-level tones, is a balls-to-the-walls, swear-word-laden ride of crazy-ability Repo men fighting against one another to bring back a living thing that’s considered nothing more than another man’s property. The first issue overplays the attitude, overplays the commentary, and lacks finesse of all and any kind. If that’s your scene, you’ll love it, if you want more, it doesn’t look as if the remaining four issues will serve it.

Artist Rob G. is just as viewable here and unrefined as ever, his pages rough-and-ready though utterly fitting to the script. His characters are awkward, their expressions bizarrely readable though blatantly stiff and seemingly bland. There’s a gangly fluidity to G.’s action, like a simplified version of Geoff Darrow’s overly-busy spreads. If you’ve liked G. before, you’ll like him here, and the action promised in future issues should allow him to show off nicely, keeping readers coming back for more (should they be satisfied with the script).

For my money, Repo isn’t all that it could be, not even all that Rick Spears and Rob G. have been, and I won’t, sadly, be coming back for the rest of it. It’s got its potentials, and it isn’t a bad book, but neither is it gripping, or really meaty enough to hold my attention beyond the first issue. I’m still a fan of Teenagers, and won’t count the creators out for future projects, but Repo is simply too thin and too uninteresting a creation inside an already glutted market. There’s nothing here that isn’t already thoroughly explored within any of the book’s obvious influences, so there’s nothing to distinguish it as worthwhile. It should be harmless fun, but even then, not the best harmless fun about, and with prices what they are, it really ought to be.