Broken Frontier

Nicholas Dane received extraordinary abilities as the sole survivor of a commercial plane crash. Now he’s on the run from a dangerous faction that wants him dead.

For those who haven’t heard, Talent was recently optioned for a feature film adaptation. This after only one issue had hit stands and subsequently sold out. The story involves a young man, Nicholas Dane, who miraculously survived a plane crash into the ocean. As his notoriety for this reaches the masses, a sinister shadow group takes notice. On the run from people he doesn’t know but who clearly want him dead, Dane discovers he has attained new abilities and even memories that are shockingly similar to the passengers who perished around him during the crash.

Golden and Sniegoski spent most of the first issue establishing the protagonist and how his world was turned upside down and inside out. They keep Dane on the run here, but the focus shifts a bit to spend a little time with the people hunting him down. We still don’t get a clear read on the intentions of the conspiracy they’ve woven together or why they so desperately want Dane, who is rather clueless to his role in all of this. It all works on the fundamental level of getting the reader to come back for more. It also helps that we haven’t seen much of Dane’s new talents other than his newfound origami and boxing skills. Whenever the hired assassins find him, one of the most interesting things to see will be if Dane can pull another rabbit out of his hat.

Paul Azaceta’s art is murky and thickly lined, but it works well for the crime noir genre. There is a lot of the human element at work here as Dane is thoroughly freaked out after surviving one murder attempt and fleeing to his disbelieving relatives. Azaceta captures the confusion and anger quite well, lending some cohesion between the scripted dialogue and the outward emotion of its characters.

While this issue of Talent didn’t knock my socks off like the first did, it provided a very satisfactory continuation of the story. This issue clues the reader in to the answers of some dangling plot questions, while leaving some room for a few more to arise. Among the pile of great new books that BOOM! Studios has on the market right now, Talent comes out at the head of the class.