Review by Ian Keogh
Opening Bang! with a page of text seemingly ripped from a pulp novel delivers Matt Kindt’s statement about where his influences lie, and the opening chapter is a fast paced trail followed by British secret agent Thomas Cord. Except he’s very different from the Thomas Cord we’ve seen in the first comic pages.
Just what the hell is going on is something to be figured out in so many of Matt Kindt’s projects. He’s a master of twisting reality, then twisting again, bouncing us into new realities when the old haven’t previously been explained. Cord isn’t the only agent up against the incredible as initiated by global terrorists Goldmaze, as we also meet John Shaw, Michele Queen and Paige Turnier, each of them starring in a perfect pastiche of a spy or crime drama.
Perhaps Kindt ought to have stuck the name of disgraced musical impressario Jonathan King into a search engine before using it, but otherwise he and Wilfredo Torres hit all the right spots. From the opening chapter it’s revealed that an author and his automatic writing machine create pulp novels featuring all the named characters, who morph into different people with the same memories. For the leading characters the disturbing aspect is the novels featuring their deaths.
Although satirical aspects manifest, Torres ignores them to present everything as clear and straightforward in a brightly coloured world. Although drawn very differently from their inspirations, there’s no great puzzle about who the cast members represent, yet Torres gives them personality and purpose. That’s his bread and butter, though, and where he excels is with the accessories like the fantastic machinery and futuristic weapons. Each only appears briefly, but is designed as a thing of wonder.
After each main character strutting their stuff in a solo adventure, their talents are combined to investigate how it is their fates are being predetermined. It’s smart, it’s meta and it’s fun unless you’re a reader demanding an exact explanation.
The likelihood is a teaser at the end saying “to be continued” is a literal tease as Kindt has surely exhausted the possibilities of his meta-fictional romp.
