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Written by Dan P. McNamara Tuesday, 31 January 2006 07:33

The cure for comics boredom: The Losers, the best damn book currently published.

Buy this Book

(DC Comics; 32pgs FC monthly; $2.99)
(W: Andy Diggle, A: Jock)

Now, I enjoy superheroes as much as the next guy, but lately I’ve been looking for good comics done outside that genre. To most people, that means reading the likes ofGhost World or Sandman, but once you’ve worked your way through the standards, the slice-of-life books all start to blend together.

The cure for comics boredom: The Losers, the best damn book currently published. Unlike most comics’ open-ended stories, The Losers has a definite beginning, middle, and end. Like a serialized novel or the hit TV show 24, it moves along a defined path from A to B to C in a very stylized and gritty way. Andy Diggle’s writing feels like it’s pouring straight out of a 1950s typewriter, sitting in a small room with peeling wallpaper, a table and chair, and a single flickering light bulb. Combine that with Jock’s dark, angular, and simplistic artwork, and the whole package screams film noir. Jock works in a style popularized over the past few years by artists like Mike Mignola and Eduardo Risso, but unlike many of his contemporaries, he’s learned a few tricks that they have not. Ever wonder why Japanese characters all have wildly impossible hairstyles and hair colors? Simple: So you can tell them apart. Why do you think superheroes all wear those wonderful primary-color costumes? By giving each of the main characters one simple, distinguishing feature, Jock manages to keep the book dark and under-lit while keeping each character unique and instantly recognizable. He even manages to convey the different way the characters move and carry themselves, making them so much more than just the typical studies in human anatomy.

What’s the book about? Is it more style than substance? Not at all. The Losers are a Special Forces team that was put under CIA jurisdiction for deployment in Afghanistan. Unfortunately for them, they saw something they shouldn’t have, and their bosses decide that they have become expendable. After their chopper goes down in flames, they are listed as dead and written off by their handlers as just another loss in a long line of CIA shadow wars. But the Losers never got on that chopper, and now that they know what the Agency is capable of, they’re taking the fight right back at them. They’re already marked for death, after all. What have they got to lose?