Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Writer(s): Frank Barbiere, Randy Stradley
Artist(s): Colin Lorimer, Doug Wheatley
Release Date: 26th March 2014

Interestingly, we start this story in media res as our hero Scott Travers has already obtained the special suit which gives him the power to slip into an shadowy parallel dimension to observe and travel between points in real space.

Opening with a dream sequence that promises high action from the start, we then discover that there has already been a dust up and our hero knows very little about the tech he has obtained or the powers at play, setting up the arc for the whole series.

Unfortunately, that’s about as interesting as this gets as the rest of the issue treads fairly generic territory of establishing our hero as a fairly hapless underling at a tech company and some black suited antagonists who could have walked out of any of a dozen different titles.

The artwork is competent but dull, restricted by the ‘blackout’ premise into shades of blue and big chunks of dark space. Sadly, the use of yellow to highlight the real world (as opposed to the shadow dimension) only appears sporadically, making the strip look like a video game cover from the last five years.

A fairly interesting concept is let down by a generic story, a lack of connection to the characters and uninspired artwork. Not a good start.

Rating: 2/5

However, the King Tiger strip packaged alongside it, was much more compelling…

King Tiger #1

Setting up a tortured protagonist with a difficult past within the first two pages, this short strip has much better pacing and uses a generally sun-bleached palette mixed with some excellent use of shadow to give a sense of unbearable heat and inner darkness.

Six pages of measured buildup lead to a final frame which is easily the best artwork in the whole comic and which let me wanting to know more about this story.

Rating: 4/5.

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The writer of this piece was: Chris Napier
You can also find Chris on Twitter.