[COMIC REVIEW] Midnight Task Force #1 Smells Like Blade Runner
Midnight Task Force #1
Release: July 2018
Writer: Mark London
Artist: Alejandro Giraldo
Letterers: Christian Ospina
Book Design: Andrew Zea
Editor: Giovanna T. Orozco
Assistant Editor: Kris Swanson
Publisher: Mad Cave Studios
Rating: 3.5 Soda cans
rates Comics out of a potential 6 pack of Soda Cans – the score indicates the value of each release in Sodas.
Midnight Task Force #1 forces out a cyberpunk meets detective noir failing relationship. You know it’s none of your business yet you just can’t look away. It’s going to boil over and you’re sure as Hell gonna be there when it happens.
Hailing from Independent comic book publishing house, Mad Cave Studios, Midnight Task Force #1 hits out like a forced cyberpunk swan song. The first issue follows the exploits of hotshot schizophrenic detective Aiden McCormick and how he deals with the decadent malformations that make up a futuristic Detroit city.
Without getting too spoilery on this issue, Midnight Task Force #1 spends a lot of its time establishing Aiden McCormick as a lost detective devoid of humanity yet wanting to rejoin the world he has mentally left behind. He finds comfort in the suffering of the victims of criminals he investigates and self sabotages any close personal bonds he forms. At the start of the issue we are introduced for a brief moment in his past as a marine where he seems to lose everything. I didn’t need that. I don’t need to know what drives a character’s inner turbulence. I just need to know that it’s there. That the storm will eventually subside in a future issue is enough for me. An origin story is unnecessary this early in the piece.
The elements of a dystopian world taken over Detroit is entirely believable. Especially, given the city’s history in recent years. Writer and Mad Cave Studio’s founder Mark London gives himself away as a homegrown Blade Runner fan. To the point where this writer wonders just how many Philip K Dick novels are under London’s pillow?
MVP for this issue is Aiden McCormick. Sure to change as the world evolves around him further down this comic series. He is a great representative of the mental illness community as a schizophrenic bionic man.
Head to midnighttaskforce.com to learn more about the comic, the characters and futuristic Detroit.
Writer, reviewer, whatever.