Irritated with decompressed storytelling?  Fed up with slow comics that spend the first three issues showing the lead character brushing his teeth?  Want more action, more explosions and generally more things going boom?  Of course you do.

Well, you might want to pick up Losers, a Vertigo book which seems to think it's Ocean's Eleven.  Not the slow bits at the beginning, but the big, highly elaborate caper sequence at the end.  This is a three-act story, and all three acts are action sequences.  Good action sequences, too.  Over the top set pieces.

Andy Diggle and Jock are veterans of 2000AD, and it's no surprise that they're at home doing this sort of story.  The constraints of page count in the British weekly anthologies means that, if nothing else, 2000AD writers tend to understand the importance of cramming lots of stuff in. 

It's not really what you'd expect from Vertigo.  Granted, it's not a superhero book.  It's an action thriller involving a conspiracy plot, as the Losers return to the USA to bring down the rogue CIA elements who thought they were dead.  Vertigo's traditional constituency comprises goths, people who like pixies, and the arthouse audience, but like 100 Bullets, this book should appeal to plenty of mainstream readers; it's more action oriented than 99% of superhero titles are these days.

The trade off is that the book's a bit slow on establishing the individual characters.  The team are set up pretty well, but there's not too much distinction between the cast.  It doesn't help that two of the cast, Roque and Clay, are often very hard to tell apart.  They shouldn't be, because one of them's got a bloody great scar on his face, but the heavy shadow and low light often obscure it.

Still, there's room to flesh out the characters more in later issues.  This isn't really about introducing the individuals, but introducing the team and hitting the ground running.  And it certainly achieves that. 

Rating: A-

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