Query: if you believe everything you read in the press, 90% of spam is supposed to emanate from around 200 people.  Presumably it wouldn't be all that hard to track down those 200 people.  Your moral and economic question for this week: given the cost of upgrading e-mail systems to get rid of them, the improbability of their complying with any legislation, and the fact that none of them bring anything of value to the planet, wouldn't it be a lot easier, cheaper and better all round if we just had a whipround and arranged for them all to be shot?

Come on!  If enough people contribute, they'll never prosecute them all.  You'll be safe, contributing your five or ten dollars to the Worthy Cause.  Somebody should set up a Paypal account.

Talking of hitmen, Gun Theory is the third title from Epic.  It's another one that we can't read too much into, however.  For one thing, it's written by Daniel Way, who is already the regular writer on Venom, has written a string of Wolverine issues, and is not on any view a previously unpublished talent.  Artist Jon Proctor has been around in one form or another for seven years and has previously worked for DC.  Also, this was a pre-existing unpublished graphic novel which has been revised into a miniseries for Epic.  Oh, and while it was originally announced as creator owned, the indicia states unambiguously that it isn't.

It is, however, the first Epic book that can make a real claim to be cutting ties with Marvel's traditional constituency.  Trouble was a romantic comedy that had Spider-Man continuity clinging to it like a barnacle.  Gun Theory is a crime thriller, and entirely unrelated to anything else from Marvel.  It would look perfectly at home at Vertigo, or (aside from the fact that it's in colour) with Oni.

The unnamed protagonist is a hitman who prides himself on his invisibility.  As he points out, the key to getting away with murder is to be so utterly unremarkable that nobody even remembers seeing you.  The worst thing that can possibly happen is for him to be noticed.  Way spends the first issue setting up that idea, and bringing in the series of tiny errors which snowball into the killer finding himself irritatingly unforgettable.

There's nothing too unusual about the idea, but Way and Proctor execute it very well.  A lot of Way's recent work tends to suffer from either glacial pacing or a distinct sense that he'd rather be writing something else entirely and has reluctantly included the lead character out of a sense of obligation.  Here, the pacing is just fine, since the first issue is all about setting up the character.  His internal monologue does a great job making him both believable and calculatedly banal.

Proctor has a curious style which shifts around in a range from the slightly loose through to the intentionally distorted.  For the most part it's extremely effective.  The last three pages seem to miss the mark and look a little rushed.  But for the most part it's great stuff, fitting neatly into the idea that very unpleasant things are happening beneath a surface of deliberate blandness.  The slightly unsettling tone is helped by Lee Loughridge's colouring, which render most of the issue in a thoroughly unnatural palette of sickly secondary colours.

Not a hugely original comic, but what it does, it does rather well.

Rating: A-

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