Absolution #1

Christos Gage has a neat idea for this Avatar limited series. Fed up with criminals committing horrific acts then walking away, police-sanctioned hero John Dusk starts taking matters into his own hands and killing criminals. What I really enjoyed about Dusk's descent into vigilantism was how incremental the steps of his fall are. He actually tries to save the first villain, White Power, until he sees what WP had done, then he lets WP bleed out. Later, after facing off against a wife-killer, it almost seemed like Dusk's blade-like forcefield slashed the husband's throat without Dusk meaning to. He seemed almost surprised to see the murderer fall down dead.

There are a lot of graphic scenes that didn't need to be so gross, but heck, this is an Avatar book. Many of the "adult" scenes could have been hinted at or suggested in shadows or with other normal comic tricks. The worst example of grossing up the material was at Dusk's teammate Alpha's family picnic, where she talks about what her husband loves to do to her in bed. Unnecessary. In fact, the only time I thought the "adult" nature of the title benefited the story was when Dusk was in bed with his girlfriend as he's suffering from flashbacks from his police case. That was an upsetting, moving scene.

Roberto Viacava's art is neat. He has that Avatar style down, with the thin pencil lines and hyper-detailed gore, but his super-heroes look decent too. They look like supers plopped into the Avatar world. So he's perfect for the project, basically. I will definitely be picking this up in TPB.

Good