Review – Crackdown #1 (Dynamite)

Publisher: Dynamite Comics
Writer/Lettering: Jonathan Goff
Artwork: Ricardo Jaime
Colours: Natalia Marques
Release Date: 20^th February 2019

Based on the highly rated series of Xbox games, Crackdown is an explosive action adventure tale based around a crack team of super powered soldiers known as Agents, as they track and eliminate terrorist threats in a world of hi-tech weaponry and even higher stakes.

Full disclosure, I’ve never played the games, and I’m not familiar with the creative team behind this series but I’ve got to say, as an action comic, this is a fun enough romp. It’s loud and dazzling and has an incredibly arrogant swagger about it. This isn’t Shakespeare and it isn’t trying to be. It’s over the top, brash and is clearly happy just having fun with itself. The downside to that is that it’s not really trying to deliver anything other than the next one-liner or gunfight.

There is the neck end of zero character development in this issue, just a series of characters introduced with a throw away one-liner and a series of explosions. Don’t get me wrong, that’s ok to a point, but for me there’s only so far you can drive a story this way, and to maintain my interest they’re going to have to pull something out of the bag. That being said, the last couple of pages provide an interesting ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK-esque twist that could potentially persuade me to pick up the next issue. I don’t know much about Goff’s previous work but this just feels like there was no real excitement or joy to be had in what he was doing, which is a shame because that twist shows real promise.

The artwork lifts this issue somewhat. Whilst it’s not staggering it is at least good enough to give us, visually at least, a clearly defined set of characters with their own traits. The colouring is also solid enough. Certain panels are really well done but others are really flat and this combined with similar issues in the drawing just leave you feeling that Jamie and Marques put the effort into panels they were having fun with but just went through the motions on everything else.

If mindless action is your thing then you’re going to have a blast with this, but if you look for something with an actual plot and a genuine enthusiasm for what the creative team are doing then I’d maybe skip this one.

Rating: 2/5.

[PREVIEW ARTWORK]