InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "You're my only hope!"

stolisomancer (stolisomancer) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-08-07 17:02:00

Entry tags:

creator: christos gage, nsfw: language, nsfw: violence, publisher: avatar press, title: absolution

Absolution #1
Avatar has approached several well-known comics writers in recent months, looking for fresh takes on the superhero. One result was Ellis's Black Summer limited series.

Christos Gage is now taking a turn at it with Absolution. According to the #0 issue, it draws its inspiration from a friend of Gage's who left the police force. Gage's friend told him that in his daily life, he dealt with a variety of criminals who he was legally prohibited from touching for one reason or another, and that he knew, sooner or later, he was just going to shoot one of them.

Absolution is about a superhero named John Dusk, who is essentially a superhuman SWAT cop; he's called in to deal with rogue "enhanciles." #1 is a flashback, showing the first time Dusk - suffering from post-traumatic stress after seeing several horrifying crime scenes - voluntarily crosses the line.

While Absolution is somewhat tame by Avatar's standards, it's still a gory book. I'm not showing the worst bits, but after the cut, there is still a dude who's been dismembered. That's your warning.

This guy has John in a bear hug until John lashes out with his "aura," a sort of Green-Lantern-esque telekinetic field, and takes off both the guy's arms. Keep in mind that the guy was about to kill him and obviously had superstrength.

I like John's outfit, while I'm at it. It's obviously a superhero uniform, but it also looks very practical.

A superhero policeman isn't a new idea, but I can't immediately recall a superhero book that's also been a police procedural. It's one of the things that I find of interest about Absolution; the hero isn't a vigilante. In fact, he's a decorated police officer with a good relationship with command.

Just for chuckles, here are his co-supercops, the Servant and Alpha. The Servant gets very little characterization in #1, but I like Alpha; the subsequent scene shows her at home with her husband and kids. (Also worthy of note: the Servant has religion and Alpha has a family.)

(I cut the page of them making an entry into the meth lab for page-count considerations, but they bust down the door yelling "Freeze! Police!" A couple of meth heads get punched in the face. Their methods, going from this, do not appear to be any more brutal than those of average policemen.)

(Read comments) - (Post a new comment)

	ian_karkull 2009-08-08 01:01 am UTC (link)
	Meh. If you want to do Top Ten Lite, this is okay, I guess. If it's supposed to be a morally grey deconstruction of superheroes, as the title and the mention of Black Summer seem to indicate, it kind of doesn't really work if you make the victim an utterly despicable human being, like a neo nazi serial rapist. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	stolisomancer 2009-08-08 01:22 am UTC (link)
	I don't think it's meant to be "morally grey." #0 indicates that the hero is not likable so much as understandable; he's not doing the right thing, but he is doing something that every cop on the planet is tempted to do. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

ian_karkull
2009-08-08 02:26 am UTC (link)

Yeah, I have a hard time sympathizing with police brutality on general principle, no matter how deserving a particular criminal might be.
The point is, his action should come across as at least questionable, which they do not when the only "victim" offered is such a monstrous strawman.
I suppose it's the comparison to Black Summer that floors me, as that series judged John Horus as (one of) the bad guys eventually, no matter how much one could empathize with his actions at the time.
This doesn't really happen here. As a reader, you want guys like White Power to be punished. I guess if the story continues down the line
taggerung301
and you have suggested further down, it could eventually get interesting, but I really only have the scans above to go on, and honestly, that's not in the least bit enticing.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

stolisomancer
2009-08-08 03:08 am UTC (link)

Respectfully, I think you're approaching this from the wrong angle. The point, yes, is that we can empathize with the hero's decision and how he came to make it. However, it is still possible to recognize it as the wrong decision, because he's a police officer and is not supposed to execute people.

I'm not comparing this directly to Black Summer, except that they came out of the same publishing initiative. They are otherwise dissimilar.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

liliaeth
2009-08-08 03:11 am UTC (link)

but see, I think that's the point. That it starts out with cases where it 'is' understandable and then once he gets away with that, how he keeps acting afterwards. Because these kind of things escalate.

If he were a bad cop right from the beginning, if he started out killing without thorough provocation, it'd be easier to condemn him right from the start.

the most interesting part of this to me, is how he's working for the police.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	lynxara 2009-08-08 03:27 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, the idea of a superhero procedural approached from a more "ground-level" angle than Top Ten is pretty interesting on its own merits. I almost wish Avatar wasn't the publisher that picked this up. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	thehefner 2009-08-08 01:25 am UTC (link)
	Well, I'm not sure that's fair. If TOP TEN is HILL STREET BLUES, then this would be, what, THE SHIELD? This at least has the potential to be a very different kind of superhero cop story than TOP TEN, and not the sort of story TT would have been able to tell. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	taggerung301 2009-08-08 01:41 am UTC (link)
	maybe the writer is going to start with ridiculously evil guys and then slowly have the main character begin to kill more normal offenders (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	stolisomancer 2009-08-08 01:46 am UTC (link)
	That's pretty much what happens in #0, yeah. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	thandrak 2009-08-08 01:49 am UTC (link)
	That's how I see it. Once you cross the line, is it easier to cross? When do you become as bad as... and so on. (Reply to this) (Parent)

(Read comments) -