If you could take the television show 24 mash it with the movie classic The Manchurian Candidate and put it in comic book form, you’d come pretty close to Crosshair #1.  Created and co-written by Top Cow founder Marc Silvestri and co-writer Jeff Katz with art by Allan Jefferson the comic is a kinetic and at times confusing look at a man who knows he’s programmed to kill the President in 48 hours and the only person that can stop him is…. himself.

Pilot Season Begins Anew as a 5 Week Event in 2010!
After settling into the life of loving husband and devoted father in the suburbs, a former assassin for the CIA learns he’s been brainwashed to kill the President of the United States. To his horror, Justin Weller has discovered that in less than 48 hours something or someone will trigger his suppressed program and send him into deadly and irreversible action. Weller must discover his triggering mechanism and uncover who is behind the conspiracy that will pitch the world into chaos.

Created and co-written by Top Cow founder Marc Silvestri (X-Men/Dark Avengers: Utopia) and co-writer Jeff Katz (Booster Gold) with art by Allan Jefferson (War Machine), Crosshair introduces a new kind of action comic.

I love the concept, the execution on the other hand is a bit scattered.  The story isn’t linear, instead we’re given out of sequence scenes, which would be fine and work on television, but doesn’t quite get pulled off on the comic page.  Instead the comic comes off as having ADHD and at times incoherent and at other times, just plain silly.

Again, the concept is great, and art pretty solid.  This is an action comic with the comic version of cut scenes and jump scenes.  It’s kinetic, and jumpy, in a bad way.  Pilot Season is a contest after all, so out of the three releases so far, this one trails in my opinion and it’s a distant third at that.

Plot: Silvestri and Katz have a great concept and at times it works really well.  The problem is the comic is herky jerky asking the reader to put to many pieces together for one issue.  The ending also left me completely confused and scratching my head.  There’s too much commotion going on at the detriment of the story telling.  Rating: 7

Art: Jefferson’s art is pretty solid.  He does the action scenes quite well, but there’s nothing here that blows me away.  It’s not bad in any away, it just doesn’t stand out either, but still it’s much better than a lot other stuff out there.  Rating: 7.75

Overall: So Pilot Season is a contest where you’ll vote as to which of these comics will be released as a mini-series.  Crosshair would definitely benefit from that, but the first issue is key in such a contest, and this one just didn’t do it for me.  If you’re a die hard 24 fan maybe you’ll enjoy it more though.  Overall rating 7.25

Recommendation: Read

Page count: 32 pages    Price: $3.99    Release Date: 10/6/2010

Top Cow provided Graphic Policy with an advance copy of this issue for FREE for review.