Dark Blue by Warren Ellis

Genre: Crime/Sci-Fi

Age: 17 and older

Violence and Gore

During my trips out to my local used bookstore, I found several comics that looked interesting and I had to pick up for cheap. This was one of them. It was very cheap and the cover and artwork was enough to get me to want to read it more. I finally sat down and read through this comic today, and is it worth looking into?

This comic follows our main character Detective Frank Christchurch (I only could like of New Zealand the entire time I heard this name). The story really sprints forward as his partner Detective Debbie Thoroughgood is looking for her partner who is “interrogating” a suspect, Brain Case, to find a mass murder Trent Wayman. It goes all in on the violence here. I mean he beats the guy nearly to death. The chief and really the main character are extremely unlikable. The foul-mouthed, screwed over cop thing can be done well, but the main character comes off as a psychopath bent on finding this Trent guy by all means necessary.

This comic is very short, so skip this section if you want to read this comic and not get any spoilers (you’ve been warned). It takes a bit to find out Frank has nightmares about nearly busting Trent after discovering a room where he slaughtered numerous people (it’s extremely graphic). There is cryptic smear on the wall (LD50). Trent gets away. We move on to find out that Frank is part of a drug trial where LD50 is being used to help him recover from severe PTSD after war atrocities occurred before him (again very graphic). He’s not a cop, but a patient; Debbie is a doctor; Trent is dead but his brain lives on in this fake city that all the people in the drug trial can coexist in, and Frank psychotically forces Debbie to have him OD on the drug to finally kill Trent from causing more murders in this “world” cause he’s “a cop”.

It dumb. It’s really really dumb. The plot is just a psycho wants to kill a psycho, but it’s all a dream (kind of). No-one is likable. I couldn’t attach myself to anyone. It felt half written, like it was missing an entire first half I never got. This story really needs more to make it, and it’s main character, have any appeal at all. Clearly, this wasn’t for me. I still believe a story like this could be good (or at least interesting) if it had an entire first half and not just a 2 page flashback to give background details. Maybe you will find some fun in this if you like very violent cop/sci-fi comics. I hated it

1 out 5 — Thumb through it at your local used bookstore at best