Publisher: IDW Publishing
Writer: Joe Halpin Sr.
Artist: Juanfrancisco Guerrero
Release Date: 15th January 2014

Things get weird for undercover cop Jake when a drug deal goes wrong and he takes two slugs to his chest. Awaking in an alley in a decaying city, he’s quickly grabbed by the police and told that he’s now in Hopetown, a fortified township in purgatory. Jake takes this completely earth shattering news in his stride and goes along to register as a citizen at the Hopetown City Hall. At the town hall he sits and listens to a presentation by the chief warden of the city which explains that they are surrounded by Dark Souls (other people in purgatory with completely black eyes) and to maintain their safety they must surrender their freedoms.

The artwork in this book is stilted, there’s no flow or dynamism on show and the inking is far too thick and heavy a lot of the time. However, the majority of the problems with this book lie in the writing. It’s oddly paced, with Jake’s preparation for his drug bust taking up a lot of the comic and a flat, anticlimactic ending. There are also several panels that are drowning in words. The character of the warden in particular is a barely disguised expository device and between that and Jake’s inner monologue, things are told to the reader rather than shown to them.

An amalgam of different comics, TV shows and movies of the past few years the story beats are largely familiar. The small community trapped within a mysterious and dangerous new existence can be seen on Lost and Under the Dome (and the Walking Dead and Battlestar Galactica and so on) while the cop killed on the job and transported to some form of afterlife is very reminiscent of R.I.P.D. It’s not necessarily bad ideas that are being lifted, but they’re not handled particularly well which makes their appearance so glaring. If it’s true that talent borrows but genius steals, let’s just say this work appears to have been leased.

Rating: 4/10.

The writer of this piece was: Joe Morrison
Joe is Freelance film journalist based in Glasgow.
You can also find Joe on Twitter.