Broken Frontier

In a remote Afghani region, American troops search for lost comrades, and Indian commandoes look for a dangerous band of terrorists. What they discover is something far more horrifying.

For nearly a year Virgin Comics has been trying to make a splash in the Western marketplace. Several big names in comics like Garth Ennis and Alex Ross, as well as big Hollywood creators like John Woo and Shekhar Kapur have contributed stories and story ideas in a collaborative effort to bring this Western invasion to fruition. For the most part, as is typical of new publishers in comics (see BOOM! Studios, Alias Entertainment or the now defunct but highly regarded CrossGen), Virgin is still struggling to find a dedicated audience for their books. Virulents is the publisher’s first use of the one-shot format, and at fifty-six pages it packs a decent amount of story into a fair value.

The tale tells of a small American group of soldiers looking for some lost troops in the Hindu Kush region of northern Afghanistan. Along for the ride are several Indian commandoes in search of terrorists who are suspected of harboring a destructive nuclear device. But in the caves of this region a frightening mystical power is coming forward and infecting anyone in its path with something that turns mortal men into terrifying creatures of the night.

As a new take on an old horror staple, Virulents is a marginally interesting tale. Dasgupta sets the story up in a political hot spot, which drives the characterization of the story, as the cultural barrier between Indians and Americans is looked at openly. However, once the collective enemy shows up halfway through the issue, action, cursing, blood and guts become the focus. And because it takes so long to reach the foregone conclusion, this all becomes overly repetitive.

Hyrapiet puts together some impressive scenes and handles all that late action very well. The only thing that somewhat irked me about the art was that his rendition of the monsters seemed to have been cribbed from the Blade 2 film. Godse actually provides the most impressive artistic performance, as his colors bring vibrancy to the drab landscape, which is mostly shown at nighttime.

On the whole, Virulents isn’t good or bad; it isn’t a particularly interesting or memorable piece of horror or social commentary (if that’s even what it was going for). Being that it is my first foray into the Virgin Comics line, I can only hope that this is a small hiccup for the publisher and that the other comics they are publishing will eventually bring them solidly into the competitive market.