Another week, another Warren Ellis project. 

Jack Cross, according to the solicitations, is "a one-man solution to direct threats to America's freedoms."  The cover opts for the rather less clunky "Now terror has something to fear!"  Both sound like the sort of thing Ellis would only write with tongue firmly in cheek.

In fact, Ellis seems to be playing this one more or less straight.  It's a spy thriller, when you get down to it, but the genre has gained a new lease of life thanks to the resurgence of terrorism.  It's finally cured the lack of decent enemies which has plagued thriller writers since the Cold War ended.  The Chinese just weren't the same.  But terrorists... now we're talking.  People aren't just interested in them, they're downright paranoid.  They're a thriller writer's gift.

But Jack Cross takes a slightly less obvious line than that.  For one thing, the only actual terrorists mentioned in this story are South African, and even they're not exactly central to the plot.  The story is much more interested in inter-agency feuding and corruption among the Americans - which is a longstanding thriller tradition in itself, of course.  Cross himself is, in many respects, your standard issue gun-for-hire hero, who's brought in when things go horribly wrong, and who uses hardcore, violent methods on an "ends justify the means" basis.  The twist is that, rather unusually for such a character, he's also apparently a bleeding heart liberal and anti-capitalist.  None of which, of course, is in any way inconsistent with anti-terrorism, but it's still a slightly unusual approach, and sets up an interesting tension with Cross's shameless disregard for the rights of the people he's interrogating.

It's a promising idea, then, and the time really ought to be right for such a book.  But the execution isn't quite there.  Gary Erskine's art is a little bit off, with slightly distorted figures lacking the sort of expression and body language that are needed to make this stuff visually interesting.  I've seen a lot better from him, mainly when he's allowing himself to cut loose more.  The cover sums it up, really - for a guy being shot at with explosions going off behind him, it's spectacularly lacking in energy. 

The pacing leaves a little to be desired as well, as the story ends not with any particular climax, but with Cross breaking off from an interrogation and wandering off to look a bit pained on his own.  It looks distinctly like an arbitrary page break in a series paced for the trade.  And the idea that our hero is a liberal campaigner is just kind of thrown out there in dialogue rather than being dramatised in any effective way.

Solid enough central idea, though.  I'll give it a couple of issues to see where Ellis is going with this.

Rating: B-

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