Review: Heavy Liquid
Like curdled solid chrome cake batter.
Luis thought it came from outer space.
It's a myth, like Bigfoot or Roswell.
But for something that doesn't exist, I find it falling into my lap often enough."
Heavy liquid.
S (a.k.a the Stooge) deals in the stuff. Corrosive, volatile, but if heated in just right they way it turns into a 'black milk' which, if you then put it into your body...
New York, 2075. He stole a quantity of the mysterious substance from a crime syndicate who have now sent his goons (in disturbing clown masks) after him. Luckily for the clowns there is a big parade in progress and lots of people in fancy dress, so their grotesque disguises do not raise any eyebrows (not even the 'lifelike' distorted face of a screaming woman from Picasso's Guernica)...
There's someone else trying to find him, too; a big man in a suit who seems to have a different agenda.
S delivers his package to a go-between for a shady client who only speaks via a very obscure image on an old multi-monitor. The client is a rich recluse who has another job for S, to find an artist who has vanished without a trace.
He wants this woman to cast him a statue... made of heavy liquid. Can S find her? Possibly he can, seeing as they used to be lovers. So begins a race against time as our hero is simultaneously the hunter and the hunted.
And also haunted. Because the stuff he drops in his ear does more than just 'expand his mind'. It also seems to have started talking to him...
Heavy Liquid by writer/artist Paul Pope is a cyberpunk thriller set in an uncertain retrofuturistic world. The style and vibe is 1960s Beatnik with touches of Buck Rogers and William Gibson woven in. S moves around this landscape with a blithe disregard for the outcomes of his dealings and a chilled contentedness with his chaotic lifestyle.
He keeps up a constant internal monologue, narrating his own story to the reader in true noir style. But his smug self-awareness almost seems to invite disaster. When the monologue becomes a dialogue it is as if fate is calling his bluff.
The retro newsprint style of the pages creates an authentic, comforting nostalgic feel, and when things take a sharp left turn into truly nightmare territory it makes the impact that much greater.
S can keep running, he is good at getting out of tight spots, ducking and diving, always keeping one step ahead of the goons, the government, the consequences of his own actions...
New York, 2075. He stole a quantity of the mysterious substance from a crime syndicate who have now sent his goons (in disturbing clown masks) after him. Luckily for the clowns there is a big parade in progress and lots of people in fancy dress, so their grotesque disguises do not raise any eyebrows (not even the 'lifelike' distorted face of a screaming woman from Picasso's Guernica)...
There's someone else trying to find him, too; a big man in a suit who seems to have a different agenda.
S delivers his package to a go-between for a shady client who only speaks via a very obscure image on an old multi-monitor. The client is a rich recluse who has another job for S, to find an artist who has vanished without a trace.
He wants this woman to cast him a statue... made of heavy liquid. Can S find her? Possibly he can, seeing as they used to be lovers. So begins a race against time as our hero is simultaneously the hunter and the hunted.
And also haunted. Because the stuff he drops in his ear does more than just 'expand his mind'. It also seems to have started talking to him...
Heavy Liquid by writer/artist Paul Pope is a cyberpunk thriller set in an uncertain retrofuturistic world. The style and vibe is 1960s Beatnik with touches of Buck Rogers and William Gibson woven in. S moves around this landscape with a blithe disregard for the outcomes of his dealings and a chilled contentedness with his chaotic lifestyle.
He keeps up a constant internal monologue, narrating his own story to the reader in true noir style. But his smug self-awareness almost seems to invite disaster. When the monologue becomes a dialogue it is as if fate is calling his bluff.
The retro newsprint style of the pages creates an authentic, comforting nostalgic feel, and when things take a sharp left turn into truly nightmare territory it makes the impact that much greater.
S can keep running, he is good at getting out of tight spots, ducking and diving, always keeping one step ahead of the goons, the government, the consequences of his own actions...
But even he can't outrun his own shadow.
HEAVY LIQUID on Image Comics
HEAVY LIQUID on Image Comics
Zak Webber
Twitter - @sfcomicartist / Instagram - @sfcomicartist
JOIN US ON FACEBOOK! - SCI-FI COMIC NEXUS
*****
***
*
Comments
Post a Comment