Posted in: Comics, Dark Horse Comics, Review | Tagged: dark horse comics, Wyrd

Uneven Art Nearly Upends Compelling 'Wyrd' (REVIEW)

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Take one unbreakable investigator, mix in a dose super-human menace, and add just a dash of  international intrigue, and you get Wyrd, a brand-new paranormal series from Dark Horse Comics.

Pitor Wyrd is a hard-drinking, hard-living problem solver for hire- whenever the United States government runs into a situation that can't be resolved through traditional means, Wyrd is brought in to take care of the problem, for a fee. He also has a pretty severe death wish, since he hasn't aged in decades, and seems to be incapable of dying.

The opening pages of Wyrd's first issue show the titular fixer jumping from a Los Angeles roof-top into freeway traffic, where he is struck by a car. Cool little panels accentuate the action, with cross-sections of Wyrd's anatomy, showing the damage that is being done to him as he tries to die. He fails, of course, and is rounded up by the government and sent to Crimea to deal with a Cold War era bio-weapon that has run amok.

Curt Pires' has set up an engaging story, with a compelling, yet thoroughly unlikable protagonist. There are shades of early John Constantine written into Wyrd's DNA, but the comparison is more testament to Constantine's impact on the genre than complaint against Pires' writing- it would be hard to create a character like this without the comparison.

The world that Wyrd inhabits is already a lot of fun to visit, and we're looking forward to where the story takes us. If we have a complaint, it's an odd one; the art is wildly uneven, but it carries the story along really well. There are panels that come across sharp and crisp, and others where characters are rendered in semi-stylistic scribbles. There are a few sequences that get muddled and hard to follow, and others where everything is hammered out in perfect detail. It's too early to tell if this is a style choice by Antonio Fuso, or if some of the pages were rushed. Stefano Simeone's color palette compliments the line-work nicely, though, with saturated pastels and stark primaries holding the minimalist pencils together.

The verdict is still out on Wyrd: this could be the beginning of a thrilling espionage tale with a super-powered tint, and what we've seen so far is enough to bring us back for more.

SUMMARY: Writer: Curt Pires; Art: Antonio Fuso; Colors: Stefano Simeone; Letters: Micah Myers; Editor: Dave Marshall; Publisher: Dark Horse Comics; Release Date: January 30th, 2019; Price: $3.99; 32 pages

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