Hardcore #1

TopCow’s Hardcore #1
Story by Robert Kirkman and Marc Silvestri

With a team like this, I am expecting a damn good story.

It opens with a person floating in a watery globe with a tube connecting him to an unseen machine. The scene switches to a criminal board meeting regarding a warhead, headed by a tall blonde man and his squat, brunet brother who tries to slice his jugular when he manages to stand. We learn guy (Agent Drake) in the watery globe is somehow maneuvering the fat brother remotely via this machine connection. Agent Drake completes his mission and disconnects from the body in time to meet a lady who is evaluating this agency, Bonnie. He runs down the process of how his remote control of a person works. Basically, they fire an override chip into a person’s neck that allows complete control of all functions remotely for 72hrs. This is used for taking down criminals so the proxies are also USUALLY criminals and end up dead so the operation is tidy and leaves an untraceable dead end. As he leaves Bonnie, he heads home, running into what seems to an old, slighted candidate for the program. He is quickly dealt with and asked to leave and Drake reports for work the next day, taking on the form of Esteban (in what looks like the house of a drug lord) and a sticky relationship with someone’s wife. As Drake reports this hiccup, Bonnie, who is overseeing this experiment for the Departmen of Defense, kills everyone, revealing to be working with the slighted ex-teammate, Markus. Markus informs Drake he has 72hrs to unplug himself without any equipment as he’s taking the show on the road for the highest bidder.

Very interesting premise and since it’s Kirkman, I feel it can only get better. Silvestri’s art is just okay here because I don’t like the stupid cheek and jawbone contours. I will definitely be picking up issue #2.