The Resistance is the second new WildStorm book to be written by Paperfilms' Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray.  The first was 21 Down, which got generally good reviews.

Resistance doesn't work quite as well.  It's a sci-fi book set in a future where, thanks to some sort of ecological catastrophe, there's a desperate shortage of food.  Depending on which characters you believe, this may be artificially maintained in order to keep big business in control.  In any event, there's now a policy of zero population growth in place, and the Resistance are an organisation of Strayz (sic - yes, that's what the government calls them) who aren't legally allowed to exist.

Zero population growth is not an original concept in sci-fi, although it is one that makes for some interesting social change stories.  There's a bit of that in here, but there's a lot more of innocent neophytes being chased around by evil robot stormtroopers and being rescued by gun-toting underground types.  None of this is is bad as such, but it plays up the generic "underground faction against the government" tendencies of the concept, which is probably the least interesting side of it, at least to me.  It doesn't help that the Resistance themselves aren't immediately gripping characters.

What we've got here is a decent sci-fi action story, but one that doesn't really do a great deal with the zero population growth idea.  There are elements of that in subplots, but it still feels like the emphasis is a bit off.

Art is by Juan Santacruz and Francis Portela, and the book certainly looks good.  The visualisation of the future isn't too original, though, and it could have come from any number of 2000AD stories.  But the idea that the city's lower levels are flooded, with submerged twentieth century payphones still littering the sea bed, is a nice touch.

This is alright, but it doesn't have the spark that made 21 Down distinctive.

Rating: B

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