Set thirty years in the future, SCI tells the story of the Tech Crime Division of the City Defence Force in Metro Novo, a new city in the UK. Their job is to find and stop illegal uses of technology. Created by Ian King, Imago updates on an every Monday schedule.
It's always fun for creators to go back forty or fifty or even a hundred strips back and look at where they began, and I wonder if Ian has done that and gone "Whoa, it used to look like THAT?" The comic has a rocky start at the beginning, and let me tell you why. With proportion problems like adult heads that look like they have been grafted onto childlike bodies, and perspective goofups out the wazoo, not to mention a muddy coloring job, you might be tempted to skip out of this comic early like you know you've done in high school. But wait. You know every negative I just mentioned? By Episode 3, (sets of pages are lumped together into groups) those have all been fixed. And that is a huge statement to be made about any growing comic creator. No more big headed short armed people. Adults look like adults. No more muddy coloring. Lots of nice color effects and shading. No more perspective complaints. Everything is in it's place with nice comic book style layouts. All in all a 100% increase in overall graphic quality. I was very impressed by this.
The writing here is a different thing altogether. While it isn't written necessarily bad, it was a little over average at best. The story came across as your basic strung together cop movie. There's even a short homage to the first Die Hard movie. Okay, I kinda liked that part. Oh, and I haven't seen "budda budda" used as a sound effect
for a gun since I drew comics as a kid. I had a little good hearted laugh at that one. I will say that the story is just starting to get deep with all sorts of conspiracy-esque elements being dropped like crumbs from a fat kids plate, so I can't write off Ian's ability to tell a good story just yet. One thing of note: a fair amount of spelling errors. Cmon, gotta watch out for those!
With drastically improving artwork and a story that is slowly coming together, this one might be worth it's weight in gold, or at least a nice chunk of silver. Give it a once over and decide if it's worth your time. You might just bookmark it and continue to enjoy the pursuits of these future cops. I'm going to check back in on one day and see if it can improve even more....
I give Substitute Class Imago...
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