Kurtis Wiebe, Mindy Lee and colourist Leonardo Olea team up for a new science fiction story, blending the story of Robin Hood with a vibrant neon-soaked world and two sisters fighting against the corporations of the future.
This review will contain spoilers for “Bounty” #1 because, honestly, I have no idea how to talk about this book without really breaking it down.
Written by Kurtis Wiebe
Illustrated by Mindy Lee
RAT QUEENS MEETS FIREFLY! The Gadflies were the most wanted criminals in the galaxyrobbing corporations to redistribute wealth to the destitute. Now, with a bounty to match their reputation, the Gadflies are forced to abandon banditry for a career as bounty hunters . . . cause if you cant beat em, join em then rob em blind! Rat Queens creator Kurtis Wiebe joins forces with pop-comic sensation Mindy Lee to present a femme fatale sci-fi caper of epic proportions! Also features an exclusive bonus story and other special content.
When the elevator pitch for your story is “X meets Y”, generally the goal is to create something which takes inspiration from both of those things while transcending them both into being its own creative thing. The thing about “Bounty” is the solicit text opens with ‘RAT QUEENS MEETS FIREFLY!’ in all caps so you know exactly what you’re and what you’re getting is exactly that and nothing more. It’s something that’s actually pretty disappoint because, once upon a time, Kurtis Wiebe was an interesting writer and books like “Debris” and “Peter Panzerfaust” tapped into a dramatic side of his writing that has all but disappeared in the wake of the success of “Rat Queens”. Teaming with Mindy Lee and colourist Leonardo Olea for a Robin Hood-style story of bounty hunter sisters should have be something interesting, but this is ‘Rat Queens meets Firefly’ in the same way that Firefly just stole all its tricks from Cowboy Bebop.
The most interesting thing about “Bounty” #1 is that its cold open feels like a sequence from the third act of another story. Using a short blurb on the credits page to catch readers up to the events transpiring before this scene, we’re immediately thrown into a scenario where our main characters are overwhelmed and defeated by a smarmy villain and must sacrifice everything to get away. This is usually the scene that would then transition into the big climax of any other story, but here it’s presented as our introduction to the sisters, Nina and Georgie. It accomplishes two things: one, it shows the reader how deep the sisters’ connection is and what they would do for each and, two, establishes a deep history of the world. This isn’t a comic where the world feels like it popped into existence on the first page. Instead, it feels like the reader accidentally started a television show during the second to last episode.
It makes for an interesting, rolling start introduction to the world and forces Wiebe to be smart in how he parses out exposition during the dialogue. With such an abrupt drop into the action, readers need to be eased into the lives of motivations of these characters throughout the rest of the scene lest the opening batter them over the head with two much information. Wiebe’s writing does that elegantly in the opening, but then completely misses the point when tries to do that same trick later on in the book. With the opening scene being but a cold open for the rest of the story, Wiebe and Lee transition in the story proper by jumping ahead in time to the middle of a bounty hunt. The problem here is that the information the reader needs to understand what’s going on isn’t as elegantly parsed out because instead of a scene with three characters in a room talking, it’s a heist cutting between three different locations and four different characters.
The transition to the story proper opens onto a character being dropped from a plastic bag full of water into a fish bowl where they are confronted by a mermaid character… and this somehow shuts down the door guard in the other half of this heist scene. It’s a sequence I read through multiple times and only barely understood what Wiebe and Lee where trying to convey in the scene. It’s bafflingly abstract and yet it’s the action that the entire scene is predicated on. The rest of the issue past this point then becomes a series of expositional info-dumps that intend to catch the audience up on what the sisters and their crew of bounty hunters have been up to in the time since that first scene, something I feel undercuts the effectiveness of the opening scene. Wiebe and Lee jump in to the story boots first and seem to realise halfway through that the water was deeper than they originally thought.
Continued belowWhile the writing is all over the place in terms of quality, Mindy Lee is a much more reliable storyteller here. Her exaggerated style uses strong, heavy lineart and rather over-the-top character features which captures a playfulness to the story. Her art style seems to draw from a lot of the same inspirations as Babs Tarr’s does so if you’re familiar with her work on “Batgirl” you’re likely going to enjoy what you see here. However, the thick linework does have its drawbacks. There are a couple panels that feels too cramped and too close up to really convey the information they need to. One panel, in the first scene, has a character reach into another character’s pocket to take out their phone. It’s a panel that’s little too close up meaning the information isn’t immediately conveyed, at least not to me. It’s not exactly something that brings down the book, but having to go over some panels to really get what’s happening can be frustrating.
The world of “Bounty” is inventive and Mindy Lee is able to create original, unique visuals through out the issue that really does make it stand out from the crowd. As much as the whole fish bowl thing confused the hell out of me, I can appreciate how wild it looks thanks to Lee’s art. This isn’t your dour, dreary science fiction comic where everything looks like the world watched Blade Runner one too many times. Instead, everything is over the top with bounty hunters wearing colourful armour and on the sliding scale of Battlestar Galactica to Overwatch, this might as well be a comic about D.Va. That sense of over-the-top-ness (which feels like too many hyphens for one word) is largely thanks to the colours by Leonardo Olea. Everything is vibrant, soaked in neon and uses a palette that ranges from dark blues and violets to proud primary colours. It would almost be garish if it didn’t feel like it fit Lee’s artwork perfectly.
Overall, this is a strange comic and I’m not quite sure what to make of it. While it opens with a rather serious tone and promises something akin to Robin Hood in a science fiction universe where two anti-authority bounty hunters face of against the world’s corporations, it eventually devolves into something that just feels like Cowboy Bebop. It’s a shame because the issue’s opening is so strong and so well crafted that to see it slip halfway through leaves a sour taste in the mouth by the end of it. Mindy Lee’s artwork and Leonardo Olea’s colours might make this worth a read and there is some hope that the next issue could turn it around and recapture the same magic of the opening scene, but neither of those are guarantees and that last half of the issue really brought down my opinion of it.
Final Verdict: 5.3 – I hope this story can turn it around because there’s such potential here, but this issue didn’t capture it.
