Cyberpunk 2077: Kickdown #4
(W) Tomasz Marchewka (A) Tommasso Bennato (CA) Jake Elphick
In Shops: Nov 20, 2024
SRP: $3.99
Like father, like daughter. Mint’s meeting with Kickdown has gone sideways and between the NCPD and the gangs, there’s no escape-she’ll have to ride head on into danger. In this final race, it’s not just the target on her head she must outrun, but her past, the memories of her father, and all that she could have been…
Cyberpunk 2077: Kickdown #3
(W) Tomasz Marchewka (A/CA) Jake Elphick
In Shops: Sep 25, 2024
SRP: $3.99
Maelstrom is fired up for the next race and with bodies on the floor, Mint will need Caliber’s attention. With her yaiba revved up, she’s got a hand to play, but being in cahoots with the NCPD is about to catch up to her… it’ll take more than winning to seal this deal.
Cyberpunk 2077: Kickdown #2
(W) Tomasz Marchewka (A/CA) Jake Elphick
In Shops: Aug 07, 2024
SRP: $3.99
Mint pays an old friend a visit who has something that belongs to her-something made just for her… On the tail of an exclusive meet with the long sought-after Kickdown, Mint must play both sides-but to move at full speed, there’s bound to be a crash.
Cyberpunk 2077: Kickdown #1
(W) Tomasz Marchewka (A/CA) Jake Elphick
In Shops: Jul 03, 2024
SRP: $3.99
Fire up the engines, it’s a street takeover! With her foot on the pedal of the hottest ride in Night City, the daughter of a famed carjacker is out to fix the past. In a crowd of gangsters, racers, and criminals, word on the street travels fast-and that’s all according to plan.
Dark Horse Comics continues the expansion of the world based on CD Projekt Red’s hit game, Cyberpunk 2077. Created in close collaboration with CD Projekt Red, Cyberpunk 2077: Kickdown is a four-part miniseries that takes Night City to the streets! The new series is written by Tomasz Marchewka, the principal writer of the Cyberpunk 2077 expansion Phantom Liberty, with artist Jake Elphick, colorist Jason Wordie, and letterer Frank Cvetkovic. Featuring cover art by Elphick, with variants on each issue from the grisly, anime-inspired illustrations of RUDCEF, André Lima Araújo with Chris O’Halloran, and prolific concept artist DOFRESH.
With her foot on the pedal of the hottest ride in Night City, the daughter of a famed carjacker is out to fix the past. Fire up the engines, street racing action is taking over. With a crowd of gangsters, racers, and criminals, word is spreading fast—and that is all according to plan. Meet new characters from the world of Cyberpunk 2077 as the underbelly of this corrupt world kicks it into fifth gear.
Dark Horse Comics and CD Projekt Red are firing on all cylinders with Cyberpunk 2077: Kickdown #1 (of 4) debuting on July 3, 2024.
Backtrack returns in the second volume of this full-throttle action series. Written by Brian Joines, the story follows a group of professional drivers from all walks of life. Each has been offered the chance to right their life’s greatest mistake. All they have to do is enter a race and be the first to cross the finish line of the final leg. Of course, there’s a catch. The drivers find themselves racing through time and fighting for their very survival with each subsequent leg of the course. There have also been hints that there is more going on than meets the eye, but the drivers have been too preoccupied with avoiding gladiators, earthquakes, and dinosaurs to do much investigating.
At the end of Volume 1, the drivers decided they needed to work together if any of them were to survive to the final leg of the race. As Backtrack Volume 2 begins, we see that some of the surviving drivers have taken this to heart, while others are still only out for themselves. After focusing mostly on Alyson during the first story arc, Joines widens the scope and gives readers more insight into the other racers’ pasts. I personally enjoyed this character development. It’s an addition that was largely missing from the first arc in the series. Use of flashbacks to break up the action scenes really helped to give the racing sequences more of a punch. Joines also uses these flashbacks to reveal further details of the motivations that lie at the heart of the each driver and the mysteries of the race itself.
Artist Jake Elphick does a great job of drawing the characters when they are shown in close-ups. He expertly conveys the emotions the characters are feeling in any given panel. I wasn’t as impressed with his skills when a panel is drawn from a wider angle. Some of the nuance is lost and it can be hard to tell the characters apart from one another. This is puzzling as Elphick draws the races at an appropriate scale, using combinations of wide and close-up panels to help readers follow the drivers’ progress along the course. The cars and their relative positions remain clear throughout the races, though at times it is tough to tell which driver is speaking or which car they are driving. Luckily, the settings of each race are extravagantly drawn, so even when a reader can’t tell exactly which driver is in peril or in the lead, there’s always other cool imagery they can take in.
While the first volume of Backtrack mainly focused on action and setting up the series, the story arc collected in this second volume feels much more flushed out. Readers are treated to the same high-octane action while also enjoying solid character development. The artwork hits a lot of high points though sometimes clarity becomes an issue. I recommend memorizing the type and color of car each character is driving. This would be unnecessary if things were drawn with greater detail in panels with wider perspectives. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case. The second volume of Backtrack, published by Oni-Lion Forge, is out now and available for purchase. Pick up your copy today to see the thrilling conclusion to the series and find out which of the drivers ends up winning the race.
Story and Created: Brian Joines Art: Jake Elphick
Color: Doug Garbark Letterer: Jim Campbell
Story: 9.0 Art: 6.0 Overall: 7.5 Recommendation: Buy
Oni Press provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
Purchase: comiXology – Amazon – Kindle – TFAW – Bookshop
Allow me to start this advance review off with an original poem: Backtrack is about a death race through time. A life-changing prize awaits, for the first to cross the finish line. When a stranger offers her the chance to change her past, Alyson vows to drive fast, and beat the rest of the comic’s cast. That sums up the plot for this action/adventure series, written by Brian Joines. Backtrack Vol. 1 collects the series into a trade paperback and published by Oni Press, is due for release on November 18th in book stores, and can be found in comic shops now.
I think it’s awesome to see a story about a female get-away driver. It was also refreshing to see that none of the female drivers were sexualized. Regardless of gender, all the drivers look like real people. There’s no exaggeration of body proportion to make them sexier and none of the characters are portrayed as sex objects. Early in the story, I would have liked to see a roster or gotten a little more backstory on the other drivers. They start dropping like flies on the first leg of the race, and although their deaths are pretty cool, seeing the nameless side characters die didn’t make much of an impact. Even once the characters start introducing themselves, they’re little more than just names, as we hardly see the characters’ faces up close for long enough to form a mental connection. By the end of the book, the main characters are pushed to the forefront and the reader gets a clearer idea of some of their motivations for joining the race, but I still would have liked to see more character development early on.
Showing the race map superimposed over black and white images was a clever way to show the passage of time. However, I wish the actual racing had been shown in more detail. The reader is basically shown the start of a leg, a few shots of Alyson and maybe a few other racers, and then a page later we’re at the end of the leg. Honestly, the race becomes less of a vehicle for the story (pun intended) and more of a gimmick that the story must weave around. The story is exciting, but it doesn’t move beyond ‘time travel adventure to fix the past.’ Now, it technically doesn’t have to move past that theme, as the story is still compelling; but if Joines had put more emphasis on the race and the drivers, then this comic would have been something really special. As it stands, Backtrack is a solid action/adventure story that just so happens to include time travel and car racing.
I really liked the dark linework and hard edges of Jake Ephick’s illustrations. This series gives Ephick a chance to showcase his artistic talents. Throughout the course of the first volume, he gets to draw several different points in time, including the Cretaceous Period and the height of the Roman Empire. He also gets to play with scale in a visually interesting way, with each leg of the race providing the opportunity for differences in the size of objects in the same panel or differences in perspective and distant between objects in the same panel. Each character has their own unique design, but unless they’re drawn in a close-up, I found it hard to tell each driver apart from one another. It would have been nice if the same amount of effort that went into the more exciting panels had also been applied toward either visually distinguishing the characters’ cars or their clothing. This would have made it easier to identify one character from another regardless of the perspective from which a single panel was drawn.
Backtrack Vol. 1 collects the first five issues of this action-packed series. This first volume contains a really well-written action/adventure story that doesn’t take full advantage of its hook, concept, or settings. The art team gets to show off their skills in certain scenes, but other scenes lack a level of detail that would have improved the visual clarity. This series is good but is kept from reaching greatness by its own shortcomings. One cool touch I want to mention in closing, included in the back is an unofficial soundtrack to Backtrack. It includes some great song choices, and fans of this series may want to put them on in the background while diving into this trade paperback.
Story and Created by Brian Joines Art: Jake Elphick
Colors: Doug Garbark Letterer: Jim Campbell
Story: 6.0 Art: 8.0 Overall: 7.0 Recommendation: Buy
Oni Press provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
Purchase: comiXology – Amazon – Zeus Comics
TPub Comics has been busy developing its comics for feature films and television. Their first project to go into development is an animated sci-fi series The Theory, based on the graphic novel of the same name.
The pilot episode will premier by Razer on May 29th, 8am PT. You can watch the proof of concept pilot episode “Battlesuit” below.
“Battlesuit” was Directed and Produced by sci-fi director Hasraf ‘HaZ’ Dulull (The Beyond, Disney’s Fast Layne & 2036 Origin Unknown) and written by Neil Gibson (Twisted Dark, Stan Lee’s Lucky Man & The Traveller). “Battlesuit” will be officially released in mid-May.
The Theory is based on a story by David Court, co-written by Forrest C. Helvie and Neil Gibson, and features a rotating team of artists. Artists include letterer Justin Burch, illustrators Amrit Birdi, Phil Buckenham, Jake Elphick, Cem Iroz, Davide Puppo, Atula Siriwardane, and Jim Terry, as well as colorist Liezl Buenavenura.
The pilot episode was finished remotely during Covid and created using high-performance Razer Blade 15 Studio Edition laptops with NVIDIA graphics and software from Unreal and Glassbox.
Razer and Tpub will be launching a competition in conjunction with pilot where a lucky winner will both receive a new Razer computer and the chance to star in the next issue of The Theory.
WWE: NXT Takeover SC
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Writer: Dennis Hopeless
Artist: Jake Elphick, Kendall Goode, Hyeonjin Kim, Rodrigo Lorenzo
Cover Artist: Lucas Werneck
Price: $16.99
NXT has become WWE’s third global brand and the launching pad for some of today’s biggest Superstars including Seth Rollins, Charlotte Flair, Alexa Bliss and many more.
Learn the untold stories behind NXT in this special event from writer Dennis Hopeless (WWE) and artists Jake Elphick (WWE: WrestleMania 2018 Special), Kendall Goode (Maze Runner: The Death Cure) Hyeonjin Kim (Sisters of Sorrow), and Rodrigo Lorenzo (WWE: Undertaker).
Collects the entire 4-issue series.
Lion Forge continues to ramp up its 2019 line of creator-owned comic book series with concepts every bit as original and unique as the creators behind them. Today, in conjunction with the opening of WonderCon in Anaheim, CA, the publisher announces Backtrack, an all-new, high-stakes series from creators Brian Joines and Jake Elphick! Backtrack is one part Fast and Furious, one part Back to the Future, with a healthy dash of The Hunger Games!
If you had a chance to fix a mistake from your past, would you take it? Alyson Levy’s life as a “wheelman” for various criminals resulted in a tragedy which left her heartbroken to this day. When she hears news of a massive cross-country car race granting the winner the opportunity to correct a single mistake in their life, Alyson couldn’t say no. But there’s one small catch. Each leg covers a different period in history. Drivers will have to contend with the world outside: barbarian hordes, dinosaurs, medieval warriors, even the far-flung future…all while keeping ahead of the competition and contending with treacherous roadways. Survival may be the only way to win; and to right history, Alyson will drive from the Big Bang to the death knell of the universe.
Backtrack will be solicited in the July-dated PREVIEWS catalog for release in September, offered to retailers in a fully returnable standard comic format, priced at $3.99.
