Page 45 Review by Jonathan
"Quit it! You're under arrest!"
"This ain't the way! This ain't the way! The leper heart will see you for what you are! See your disrespect! See your bruises upon my body!"
"Shut up!"
"Promises were made! You're spoiling it! The leper heart promised! Took the soil and the air and left us in the dark with a promise it would come back for us too!"
"Shut the hell up!"
"Swelling up, swelling up out of the unreach, keeping its whispered promises! Low Theta hanging inside the sun, Melancholema and Pale Chronozon..."
The Earth is dead, destroyed by a toxic mixture of pollution and greed. Yep, that'll do it. Humanity now lives in various scattered space stations owned by mega-corporations, known as Habitats or on the 'Brink' as it's colloquially known. Crammed into such confines, with security provided by private firms, it's perhaps not surprising the locals have a tendency to go a wee bit stir crazy from time to time, some more so than others.
In addition to the crime gangs peddling narcotics, running protection and the like - who of course are going to find their niche in any environment as parasites do - there are also a few oddball cults that spontaneously spring up as people start to collectively lose the plot and look for absolutely anything at all to grasp onto with their remaining shreds of sanity, no matter how implausible or nonsensical. The cults hadn't as yet, reached Odette Habitat, owned by Sugarsurf Pharma, but all that's about to change as Investigator Bridget Kurtis and her partner Carl "Brink" Brinkmann have just found out...
I absolutely loved this work and I am delighted to hear the third arc has just begun in parent title 2000AD, second arc collection to follow next year. Part speculative fiction, part crime and definitely a huge chunk of mystery, this will massively appeal to anyone who enjoyed Antony Johnston & Justin Greenwood's THE FUSE. This is like that title, procedural crime set on a space station, just with a great deal of added creepy suspense and even a touch of pure horror blended in. You have been warned.
For a weekly 2000AD yarn it's impressively slow at revealing its hand and even by the very end I was left tantalised and puzzled as to precisely what is really going on. The enormous cliffhanger that we're left dangling over by our fingertips doesn't help in that respect, damn you Abnett!! You may well even start to believe some of the craziness the cultists are spouting. It's certainly starting to cross Kurtis' mind...
Another point of comparison you might have caught recently would be the excellent TV show The Expanse which is based on James S. A. Corey's series of novels. That's a series which has utterly gripped me, to the point I have now bought the novels because I can't wait for the TV show to catch up, but Brink has grabbed me equally hard. I'll be black and blue soon! I might even have to start reading 2000AD for a weekly fix...
The cult element even put me in mind of the first season of the True Detective TV show (which of course gives a neat little callback to Ian Culbard's superlative adaptation of THE KING IN YELLOW) in that there's a general, lurking sense of unease which only builds and builds as what you are sure couldn't possibly be real starts to come into question... It couldn't, right? That sense there might just really be something scary behind the proverbial curtain after all... Or that could all just be drug induced paranoid mass hysteria of course...
Dan and Ian have worked together before to great effect on THE NEW DEADWARDIANS and two volumes of WILD'S END (we need that concluding volume, guys!!) and I enjoyed Abnett's foreword that rightly credits Ian's "distinctive art work and brilliant storytelling." It's nice to see as accomplished a writer as Abnett giving just plaudits to his artistic cohort for their contribution to the wider creative process and the plotting. There are a further couple of interesting paragraphs talking about how their collaborations work.
Plus Ian's art is an absolutely vital part of this title.
From the disorientating, mood-setting cover which neatly foreshadows the psychological component, pull-back outer-space shots of the vast, orbiting stations whose crisp exterior beauty belies their squalid interiors, through to the little background details like the neon signs and graffiti (might be a clue or two there!), he is one of the best scene composers in the business. The action scenes are taut and tense and perfectly capture the claustrophobic, cacophonous confines of life in a corporate-owned floating tin can. He's also utilised the same strong, vivid colour palette he deployed to such good effect in his other brilliant collected 2000AD science fiction epic BRASS SUN with Ian Edginton, that is also finally returning, huzzah!! Great to see the cream of the galaxy's best weekly comic making it into collections to reach as wide a terrestrial, and presumably extraterrestrial, audience as possible. All that remains is to say Splundig vur Thrigg. I probably won't eat a polystyrene cup though.
