Ram V and Laurence Campbell team up for “The One Hand,” which sees a retiring detective returning to an old case when a new victim’s found. That may sound familiar, but pay attention, there’s much more going on here.
Written by Ram V
Illustrated by Laurence Campbell
Colored by Lee Loughridge
Lettered by Aditya Bidikar
Designed by Tom MullerNeo Novena detective Ari Nassar is about to retire with an enviable record, until a brutal murder occurs, bearing all the hallmarks of the “One Hand Killer”. . . which should be impossible, since Ari already put him away not once, but twice in the years before.
What follows is a deadly cat-and-mouse game as Ari pursues his quarry down the rain-soaked streets of Neo Novena. Ari will stop at nothing to unravel the secrets and ciphers of this case, but each revelation only leads further into the dark heart of his future-metropolis and Ari’s own beleaguered soul.
Grippingly written by award-winning writer Ram V (The Many Deaths of Laila Starr, Swamp Thing) with hauntingly atmospheric art and covers by Laurence Campbell (Old Haunts, B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth) and Lee Loughridge (Deadly Class), The One Hand is a miniseries that will keep you guessing until the very end.
Project Gemini began with a direct message at 4 AM (an idea so urgent that it couldn’t wait till sunrise) in 2019, then came together over the next four years, building a strong foundation and waiting for the right collaborators. The result is “The One Hand” by Ram V and Laurence Campbell and “The Six Fingers” by Dan Watters and Sumit Kumar, two books that are complete on their own, but when both are read, a third narrative emerges. It’s an intriguing idea, and it was this that first got me hooked. I was reeled in a little further when Watters described Project Gemini as stemming from a desire to create a Hegelian comic book. But I was truly caught when I saw Laurence Campbell was involved.
Campbell’s art always conveys so much more story than the literal words on the page, so pairing him with a project like “The One Hand” immediately made this one of my most anticipated comics for 2024. (Also, it’s a quirk of his art style that he often uses thumbprints to create texture, so there’s something very satisfying about him working on a project where so much of the core iconography is hands and fingers.)
“The One Hand” #1 opens with the protagonist, Detective Ari Nassar, talking to his psychiatrist. I want to draw attention to the way this scene creates time. The first two pages keep returning to very narrow panels, always the same shape and size. Visually, this creates a rhythm. The first of these narrow panels is close on a watch face, telling the reader the silence in the first panel is lengthy—but it also seeds the sound of ticking into the reader’s head. The second panel shows a Newton’s cradle, static in the panel, but nonetheless, it’s impossible to look at a Newton’s cradle and not mentally hear the rhythmic clacking of those metal balls. In effect, each narrow panel reads like a “tick” on the page, and we carry that over to the second page, where every second panel is that distinctive narrow panel, making the page read with a “tick tick tick.” By the end of page two, this panel shape is now strongly associated with time and feeling the weight of it.
This panel shape association is reinforced a few more times throughout the meeting with the psychiatrist by returning to objects connected to the concept of rhythm or clockworks, so later on when the story references this panel shape, you can’t help but feel the weight of time. You can’t help but feel a “tick.” And you can’t help but feel the repetition.
And we should. Detective Ari Nassar certainly is. The story has him on the case of the One Hand Killer, a case he’s already solved twice before. Ram V deconstructs the order of the story events for a similar effect, with Nassar arriving on the crime scene by page three, but that’s a flashforward, which we’re shown while Nassar is talking to his psychiatrist about his past. Page three and already the story is trying to make us blur the distinction between past and present. This aspect even carries over into the design of the city Neo Novena. Though set in 2823, it feels very much like now—and also the future… and the past. Most importantly, it feels familiar.
Continued belowIn other ways, “The One Hand” makes us look at things differently. Our first glimpse of the killer at work can almost be read like lovers in the throes of passion. The purpose of this isn’t clear with only this first issue, other than its unsettling effect. However, it made me wonder how much I was being shown that appeared normal is also a distorted view or a hidden subjective presentation. For example, at one point, a character mentions to Nassar that she doesn’t watch the news, because it’s all bad news. “It’s always raining in Neo Novena.” And it is always raining; every time Nassar steps outside it’s raining. But that other character also observed, ”That’s not what it’s really like out there…” And I couldn’t help but wonder if this line is hinting at the truth. Is the constant rain just the way Nassar sees Neo Novena? A question that was still on my mind as I dove into “The Six Fingers” #1, where it isn’t always raining.
The other thing that quickly became apparent as I started on “The Six Fingers” is not just that these two comics share a story world, but that they share some visual language. It’s not just that Campbell and Kumar had to design a futuristic city that was recognizably the same place in both comics, but that certain story beats had to communicate the same way. Those same panels of an act of murder reading like an act of passion are used here. Both comics frequently use window blinds to cast black bars across their characters, making them feel caged. When writing a review, there are often blurry distinctions between the writer and the artist, but in “The One Hand” I can’t help but feel like I’m seeing the fingerprints of the creative team from “The Six Fingers” too.
The unifying elements across both books are Lee Loughridge’s colors, Aditya Bidikar’s lettering, and Tom Muller’s design. I know we don’t normally talk about the designer when we talk about comics, but in this case I feel it would be a disservice not to. Muller is responsible for the One Hand Killer’s cipher, which is such an iconic part of both books, and a major element at play in all the covers. Just walking past “The One Hand” and “The Six Fingers” on a comic book store shelf, you can immediately tell these comics are a part of the same world in large part because of that cipher.
For Loughridge, his colors really have to function as a navigational element, not just in terms of where the characters are but when. The story jumps around a lot, but it’s never confusing. In fact, it’s rather effortless to read and know when each element takes place, and when juxtaposed scenes are happening in tandem or apart. I get the feeling there’s much more going on with his work that won’t be apparent until the story is done—something to catch in a reread.
Bidikar’s lettering made a choice that immediately jumped out at me. Both Campbell and Kumar use panels with clean, straight lines (with exceptions for specific purposes) and yet the lettering has uneven caption boxes and speech balloons. It’s a contrast I find very appealing. I believe it serves a larger purpose, but we’ll need to wait for “The Six Fingers” to come out before I can discuss that.
“The One Hand” #1 is a very promising start to this series. In some ways, this is very familiar territory—we’re all seen the retiring detective with one last case to crack before—but the way the story’s told, you can’t help but look a little closer. With “The Six Fingers” #1 out this week, now’s a great time to pick up “The One Hand” #1 if you haven’t already.
Final Verdict: 8.5 – I am thoroughly intrigued “The One Hand” #1. The nature of its concept demands a comic that the reader should want to read more than once, and the way the story is told, the way it challenges the reader to think about what they’re seeing, the creative team have absolutely succeeded.
