Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Writer: Alex de Campi
Artist: ChrisCross
Colorist: Snakebite Cortez
Release Date: 28th June 2017

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It’s has been a while since I’ve read a legitimately straight-up action comic, with most releases these days preferring to utilise a mash-up of a variety of different genres.

The first issue of Bankshot flies off the page at you like the opening salvo of an action film. It quickly sets up just how bad-ass our chief protagonist Marcus King is before delving into his origin. However, unlike a lot of first issues, it doesn’t draw out his somewhat typical backstory over the whole issue, instead backing it up with flashes of the present day to let you know just where Alex de Campi’s story is going.

The tl;dr is that Marcus was a soldier who had a very bad day in which he was forced to work for a quasi-mythical “big bad” called the Dutchman, who has, since then, been trying to hunt him down.

We don’t get to learn too much about Marcus’ character here, which keeps him intriguing. Is he a soldier of fortune with a moral code, is he – as the FBI believe – a terrorist, or is he just out for revenge? This is once again a refreshing approach, as most first issues these days practically trip over themselves to lay everything out right from the get-go, sapping any chance of mystery from the story.  I imagine these questions will be answered shortly, but for now, it provides a pleasant change of pace.

The artwork from ChrisCross, while light-years beyond my own abilities, is nothing to particularly write home about.  It’s solid, expressive, technically proficient, but simply isn’t to my personal taste.

Ultimately though, it feels like Bankshot has the potential to become the comic book version of the Matthew Reilly novels (excellent action novels that you should definitely seek out), so I will be keeping a close eye on it as the series develops and hope to review it again in a few issues time.

Rating: 4/5.

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The writer of this piece was: David Gladman
David Tweets from @the_gladrags

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