Straight from the pages of “Dark Horse Presents”, this interdimensional superhero now has his own four-part miniseries. Only Scott Travers isn’t really a superhero – not yet, anyway. He’s just a guy who’s found a suit with amazing powers, and if he uses it to unearth some much-needed answers, so much the better.
Written by Frank Barbiere
Illustrated by Colin LorimerScott Travers’s special suit lets him move through our world unseen and untouchable within a shadowy parallel dimension—but he doesn’t know how the suit works or where it came from. With his benefactor missing and unfriendlies after his Blackout gear, Scott must find answers before the answers find him!
* Story by Frank Barbiere (The White Suits, Five Ghosts).
* Special King Tiger feature by Star Wars stars Randy Stradley and Doug Wheatley!
* Part of Project Black Sky!
* Introduced in the award-winning Dark Horse Presents.
Scott’s friend and colleague, Bob, has gone missing; and as a handy bit of exposition informs us, using the Blackout suit to try and find him went sour, and quickly. Now he’s got to show up to work and deal with the aftermath – but with so much possibility at his fingertips, he won’t stay out of trouble for long.
Frank Barbiere gives Scott plenty of sarcastic lines, keeping this character grounded despite his extraordinary circumstances. The way he plays dumb when his boss questions him is kind of a goofy moment – his excuse is pretty tenuous – but it’s goofy in the right way, keeping the character unassuming. His workplace – a serious-looking research facility – is now a crime scene, and it would be wise to keep his head down, right?
The words match up well with Colin Lorimer’s characterizations, which tend to humanize and hint at flaws. Scott himself isn’t really a handsome squarejaw, and his uncertainty about his position comes across in his pinched expressions. The characters in-the-know about the suit’s capabilities, meanwhile, have an icy veneer to them, which feels about right given their privileged positions.
All the while, the pacing of the issue is slow but sure. Getting a reader caught up on a character and set of circumstances, while still trying to make the issue read like a #1, is no mean feat, but Barbiere and Lorimer pull it off. A dream-as-flashback device is handled well, delivering the story so far without being too literal, and the expository dialogue that follows doesn’t feel too redundant. And while the issue goes a couple different places, the flow of the action is easy to follow.
It helps that Lorimer’s such a dab hand at setting the scene, laying out rooms with confident camera angles and a solid sense of perspective. You’ve always got a handle on the space and how it’s being inhabited, and while that sounds like weak praise, it’s not often you come across this sense of quiet spaciousness. At the same time, the technological details are convincing, implying a scientific world that extends beyond the edges of the panels. And most importantly, the Blackout costume really does look like a piece of black ops technology, functional and minimalist and not really a “costume” at all.
Capping off the issue is the back-up “King Tiger”, and this installment starts us off on an odd journey indeed. We’re introduced to an ex-soldier with a problem to solve, who’s taken to wandering the desert in search of a shaman. Alongside Randy Stradley’s stripped-down narration, Doug Wheatley’s art walks the line between photorealistic and surreal, laying out a scorching desert, a weathered protagonist, and a hell of a last-page surprise.
Some of the transitions between pages are a little hinky – one part of a conversation is skipped over without much ceremony – but otherwise this is a novel little concept that hits some neat visual highs. Following this soldier’s predicament alongside Scott’s isn’t an unwelcome prospect at all.
Overall, this first issue of “Blackout” feels a little light, but that’s likely a side effect of Barbiere and Lorimer having to re-set the scene and spend some time on the exposition. Otherwise, this is a well-paced and confidently-drawn issue; and while the story at its core isn’t anything special, the smooth execution makes it worth a read.
Final Verdict: 8.0 – Buy
