Ales Kot teams up with “Change” companion Morgan Jeske for another terrific issue of this progressive, thinking man’s spy-thriller.
Written by Ales Kot
Illustrated by Morgan JeskeRio, 2019. Edward Zero looks in a mirror and the mirror gives him unsettling answers. The mirror being Carlyle, ex-Agency spy, holed up in a favela, running his own gang.
Mirroring the beginning of the series first issue, “Zero” #4 crystallizes several of the book’s key themes. The value of human life, the power of story, redemption, both from and through violence, are all wrapped in a delicious deep cover government conspiracy.
“Zero” #4 finds Agent Zero in Rio De Janeiro, nine months after last issue’s tragic events. His official mission: the assassination an ex-Agency operative named Gareth Carlyle. However, curiosity gets the best of him, and Kot circles back to plot threads from the first issue, stirring the ever thickening plot.
Carlyle, a brute whose tragic story calls to mind Bruce Willis’ character in Looper acts as a glimpse into Zero’s future, a cautionary tale, but also a way of escape. The life Carlyle has built emphasizes the book’s hopeful humanism in the face total depravity, the worst humanity has to offer. The cure is simple, the secret to living well is encapsulated in an 80’s Swedish pop ballad.
While the first half of the book is exposition driven, with talking heads and philosophical musings, Kot and Jeske do a jarring 180. It begins with a close up shot, a pair squinted eyes squared off like rabid wolves beginning to pounce. And pounce they do. What comes next is one of the most visceral and gut wrenching action/fight scenes in recent memory.
Sure the car chase, which almost never works in comics, gets a bit muddled. However, as far as pure fisticuffs go, Jeske delivers. Zero and Carlyle’s slow decay into bloodied human pulp is as off-putting as it is engaging. Under the dim glow of tunnel overhead lighting, the combatants movements are shadowy blurs. In one panel, a boot clad foot extends. In the next the dark after-image finds its mark. Glass flies, blood drips, dust rises and settles, and something changes in our protagonist. It’s all gorgeously rendered by Jeske and fully realized by Jordie Bellaire, who never ceases to impress.
Like much of Kot’s work, “Zero” #4 isn’t afraid to push boundaries, or to make you feel something, even if you’re not quite sure what it is you feel. It’s hard to describe this story as either character or plot driven, but it certainly is driven. I for one can’t wait to see what plans Kot has in store for Agent Zero and the menacing Agency.
Final Verdict: 9.0 – Buy.
