Broken Frontier

The Highwaymen were the great super-agents of the Clinton administration, but now – at some unmarked future date – they’re our nation’s last hope…and pushing 60.

Able Monroe and I. McQueen are the near-mythical, unaffiliated mavericks that once held the support of the nation itself. Though long retired and in hiding, McQueen receives a video message from Bill Clinton himself (long deceased) which confesses to a long-ago aborted protocol that now requires cleaning. A rogue branch of the CIA are after the remains of said protocol, and so it’s up to two 60-year-old geezers to get back their ass-kicking groove and save the day before it’s too late.

The Highwaymen is everything I hoped Rush City to be – it’s an action movie on paper, with all the proper quips, creative violence, and impossible stunts, minus all budgetary concerns. It also happens to be smart, well-paced, impelling with intriguing characters, or, in other words, it’s good. Very good. Writers Marc Bernardin (senior editor of Entertainment Weekly) and Adam Freeman (who’ll also co-write with Bernardin the upcoming AIT-Planet Lar graphic novel Monster Attack Network), for being new to the comic book scripting biz, manage an exceedingly solid debut. This opening chapter primarily concerns McQueen re-drafting his ex-partner Monroe into Highwaymen business, and gleefully – as Monroe currently drives a senior citizens bus – this entails a lengthy and wholly inspired chase scene between a CIA unmarked car and said bus filled with geriatrics.

The two main characters of the book are a likeable blend of cliché and idiosyncratic, having voices of their own though of the obviously Ellis-y, Planetary/Authority mold. There are no super-powers involved (well, not yet, though this is a somewhat technologically advanced future, and hints of possible, fantastical elements are already in place), though the action is joyously over-the-top and of the pure-entertainment sort. This is Die Hard and Lethal Weapon though with very comic book sensibilities, characters more suited to the paneled page and villains that could have been pulled straight out of Helios or Checkmate. The book is a terrific blend of old and new, a fine example of how tropes can be used without sacrificing the overall quality of a story.

British artist Lee Garbett (most notably of Dark Mists and the London Falling) is a good match-up with the script, allowing the story to be flashier than the artwork itself. He had a lot of Mignola/Nixey/Jason Asala going on in his earlier published works, though here he cleans his lines and appears highly reminiscent of Frank Quietly (oh, he of the gargantuan chin). Every panel is well rendered, the layouts of the pages learned, if not adventurous. The story packed within Highwaymen #1 is dense – finally a first issue with enough inside its pages! – and doesn’t allow Garbett a lot of wiggle room to get presentational, but nonetheless he puts out an issue highly enjoyable, and even memorable.

All together, Highwaymen is a mini-series (five issues) everyone should get behind. There’s simply nothing not to like, there’s whimsy, high-octane action, a plot as wild as it is straight-forward, and slick n’ smart art that allows the adventure to read like a literal ride, like something the reader only has to sit down and hang onto to enjoy. I can’t wait for Bernardin and Freeman’s next offering, and happily welcome Garbett over to the American side of things. If all first issues were this good, I’d never have to make choices again!