I’m on the fence with this issue. I liked aspects of it, but other parts were too vague. Here’s my take on the nameless main character: he’s Frank Castle if he had become a paramedic. Sounds awesome right? Well it is for the most part, but there’s a few holes in the story. The tale picks up in an interrogation room at a police station. Two cops are talking about our nameless Trained Medic sitting cuffed in the room. He apparently went ape and injured an officer already forcing them to sedate him… he doesn’t look very sedated by the way as he struggles with his cuffs. Finally an officer goes in to talk to him and get his story.
Now we jump to the past as our Trained Medic wakes up in an ambulance that’s crashed. He doesn’t remember anything, but he hears a distress call come through on the radio. He tells the person he’s on his way and starts driving the busted up ambulance to the address given to him across the wire. He comes across a dude with a machine gun and makes quick work of him… but he also blows up his ambulance. He takes the dudes shit, minus the gun and continues towards the address.
As he gets closer he comes to a police line holding back a group of very angry people. He tells the coppers to let him through, but they decide to arrest him instead. Bad idea as he maces one of them and beats the shit out of the other one. He clears the line and runs inside a house on the other side.
While the story isn’t bad, there are just too many questions about what’s going on in the world. Why did he crash? Why was there a dude with a gun trying to jack an ambulance? What are the people in the town upset about? Why does our Trained Medic feel that he’s the only one that can help the people and what does he feel he’s helping them from. It’s question after question and frankly there isn’t a single answer in this issue. As a reader I wanted to understand his motivation and it wasn’t there to discover.
The character is a bad ass, but I don’t know his background. Is he ex-military or something because he’s a bit too old to be a medic and too much of a B.A. to… well to be a medic. Still a vigilante medic is a definitely a new twist.
The dialogue isn’t bad even if it doesn’t give us any answers. It flows well and the narration accompanies it smoothly. I find the issue to be a quick read which was probably for the best and the pacing for the action was solid.
The artwork is in all black and white, which I’m a sucker for. When done well and matched with the right story it can be very powerful. Charlie Hodgson’s artwork is very detailed and clean, but the pages end up having a lot of white-dead space. The action is easy to follow, but with so much dead space the intensity of the action isn’t there. Some pages have a variety of panels and overall a good layout which eats it up, but not all of them are like that.
It’s an entertaining issue and if you just want to be entertained than you’re sure to like this issue. I wouldn’t be opposed to checking out the second issue, but the background of the character and setting needs to be explored. It can’t all be this Medic being a bad ass with no reasoning behind it because eventually the reader will stop caring about his journey. Give it a shot though if you’re looking to get your action fix.
Score: 3/5
Writer: C.S Baker Artist: Charlie Hodgson Publisher: Dead Canary Comics Price: $3.50 (Roughly) Website