I don’t think anyone wants any medium of art that they put out to be a chore to get through…unfortunately, for me S.H.O.O.T. First was just that. I was just as confused at the beginning as I was at the end, and the only reason I went through it again was to provide a coherent review for the site. At first we’re introduced to a woman known as Mrs. Brookstone, who is part of S.H.O.O.T. (Secular Humanist Occult Obliteration Taskforce). Their assignment in this issue is to take down a jinn who is staging a fake suicide bombing at a mosque. For those unfamiliar with the term such as myself, a jinn is “an intelligent spirit of lower rank than angels, able to appear in human and animal forms and to possess humans.”
The jinn is in the process of kidnapping those who are believers and plan to use them as a source of ‘belief energy’ after Armageddon. There is one man who is known just as ‘Infidel’ who is at the mosque, confessing to himself that he doesn’t believe in any god. He tries to save people who are being kidnapped, since the jinn doesn’t want non-believers such as himself. S.H.O.O.T. are in the process of trying to kill the jinn, but it keeps growing bigger and stronger. Infidel actually ends up shooting one of their guns that explodes the jinn and saves everyone. Later, we find out that the only people allowed in S.H.O.O.T. are those that don’t believe there is a god. Due to this, Infidel ends up joining the squad.
There are just too many negative points that plague this book. The storytelling is choppy and there wasn’t much of a flow. The fight with the jinn took up a good portion of the book, but unfortunately the action wasn’t memorable. I didn’t enjoy the fact that the squad were using terms that I was frustrated to not know of until the end of the book. It only made sense the second time I read through it, which I honestly wouldn’t be doing if I weren’t writing this review. The supporting characters were lacking in personality and weren’t memorable, and the art was good but nothing to write home about.
To me the plot is very odd and I’m not sure who their target demographic is. I would understand them trying to pull in the atheist demographic since that seems to be pretty popular these days, but I don’t think it’s dark enough to pull in that crowd. There’s a definite sci-fi and futuristic element to it, but overall it fails to impress or intrigue me.
Score: 2/5
Writer: Justin Aclin Artist: Nicolas Daniel Selma Publisher: Dark Horse Comics Price: $3.99 Release Date: 10/16/2013