Page 45 Review by Stephen
"Festival Of The Dead means I've been in Singapore for a year now. Figures. Getting too comfortable. Getting stale. But this place has rich pickings for a man in my line of work… And this smug fuck is ready to fall."
I'm sorry, Weaver, which smug fuck is that? Do you mean Mr. Lee, the man in the suit sitting on the opposite side of the poker table to you?
"I read him before the game. He's a bluffer with more money than sense. Been luring him into a false sense of security all night. Letting him think he's winning… before I spring the trap."
Oh, before you spring your trap! You crafty fellow, Weaver. There's no fooling you, is there? You smug fuck. That smile's about to be wiped right off your face.
From the writer of SNAPSHOT and THIEF OF THIEVES VOL 3, oh, how we loved this!
Juicy, shadow-strewn art, maximum action, charismatic voice. You'll enjoy spending time in this quick-thinking but over-confident idiot's head; almost as much as Weaver enjoys spending time in his victims' heads.
Weaver is a man who can, for a span, absorb other people's memories and physical capabilities. Take Mr Lee's bodyguard, Xiong, a black-belt in Taekwondo. One bluffed handshake later and Weaver is too - plus he also "remembers" exactly what the bodyguard's packing. Well, almost. There's a limit to what you have time to recall in the middle of a duff-up.
I love how Diggle has thought all of this through: both the potential and the pitfalls - the limitations.
"By the time I find Xiong's car, there's not much of him left. His repertoire of kicks, punches and disarm manoeuvres fade like a waking dream. Always hate the comedown. That hollowed-out feeling mixed with sour adrenaline. That and the muscle burn. It's not like I had time to stretch."
With skills like those you could do a lot of good for the world. You could also do one hell of a lot of damage. Weaver has no such ambitions either way. He's no more than a gambler and a thief, enjoying the kiddie thrill of conning people, getting one over them and taking their money. It's his pitifully small-time revenge for a youth spent languishing in state custody being diagnosed with every neurosis and full-blown mental illness known to man. What else were they to make of the voices in his head he absorbed through physical contact?
Weaver doesn't care how he came to be like this but other people do, for there is strategic power to be gained and significantly more money than Weaver has ever lost or won. As slick as you like with barely a second for breath, this thriller goes global in no time.
There's Maggie, sent to save him and deliver Weaver to one Deacon Styles in New York City. There's the wolf in Maggie's head when Weaver tries to read her, then the wolf on the wall in Styles' opulent apartment. Styles is… acquisitive. He has acquired money. He has acquired knowledge. He has acquired Maggie and, although he doesn't know it yet, he has acquired Dominic Weaver. All these assets will be used and abused to get him to the one place and the one person he wants most of all. They're very well hidden. For now.
Together Campbell and colourist Crabtree will feed your greedy eyes with sunsets, cityscapes, tropical terrain; 100-mile-an-hour motorcycle mayhem, helicopters deafening you with their rotor-blades and a great big garbage truck with front-loading prongs which I wouldn't mind taking for a motorway spin myself. Take that, BMW drivers! I'll show you the true meaning of tailgating.
First six issues plus the script to #1, always handy for those wanting to peek behind the curtain and see how it's done.
