Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Ales Kot
Artwork: Andre Lima Araujo
Colouring: Chris O’Halloran
Release Date: 19th July 2017

---

I can easily say that this is the first issue in a while where I can clearly see the potential in a series. The downside is that I can also see the potential pitfalls.

The story follows three exception hackers and their potential recruiter at a US “black ops” site. We learn that the recruiter, Mr. Akio, has a side project with the power to rewrite the human genome using three blocks of coding. This side project is shut down by his superiors, but while in the process of recruiting the hackers he exposes them to the code in defiance.

We also learn some of the backstory to the hackers, which feels a little superfluous at this point, other than the fact that it may give outside powers leverage over them at a later date.

Ales Kot’s story has a lot of potential to play with the usual mentor/mentee relationship and provide a fresh modern take on superheroes on the real world. It will also be interesting to see how the military deal with this increasingly escalating situation. Will they decide to make more, or move outlaw this ability?

The artwork, while impressive, isn’t to my personal taste. That being said, Araujo’s style does work extremely well alongside the story. It is somehow soft and easy on the eye but still has a hard, visceral edge that I haven’t seen before.

I just hope the creative team don’t retread over stories that have already been covered by their obvious influences. There are so many flavours of other work in this book including Power Rangers, X-Men, Chronicle and Incredible Hulk alongside an ominous reference to George Orwell’s 1984.  It’ll be interesting to see how this story evolves, that’s for sure.

Rating: 3/5.

---

PREVIEW ARTWORK
[Click to Enlarge]

---

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

---