Sci-Fi & Fantasy Illustrated: Red Banned

Sci-Fi & Fantasy Illustrated:  Red Banned
Mature Audiences only
Written by: Tim Cox
Illustrated by: Anthony Spay
Released by: Zenescope

I have to admit when I looked at the cover of this comic I was a bit worried at what I was going to find in the issue.  The words “mature audiences” splashed on the front cover and a woman being threatened by a knife.  I was worried that it would be a bit too racy for my tastes and based upon the cover alone this wouldn’t have been the type of comic that I normally pick up.  Instead it is a great story with modern elements, but set in the future.  It really reminds me of a great episode of the Twilight Zone, it has that feel to it with the unexpected occurring and the shocking ending.

We are told that we’re in the future.  The reality video craze has continued and expanded until humanity can’t get enough of it.  But they hunger for violence and seeing people killed.  At first they just killed the undesirables, the criminals of the world and the unstable.  They broadcast it for all to see.  And then to meet demand they started killing the innocents, the average person.  The shows are supposed to be banned, but they continue being streamed across the world.  In the first few pages we see a woman brutally murdered and people watching it on their TV’s, their laptops, whatever they can and seemingly enjoying it.  And then one of our main characters enters the picture and she finds a note in cut out letters spelling “you’re next.”  She meets up with our other main character, a cop. One that cares too much, but does his best to protect her even going out of his way to hide her in a different apartment.  But he fails and the woman is taken to a mysterious building where the truth is revealed.  Clones–of the cop, of the woman, in a continual cycle of killing to provide entertainment to the masses.

I really enjoyed the writing style in this issue.  It grabs you from the get go and doesn’t let go until that last page.  It has a nice Twilight Zone vibe to it and the characters have a sense of humanity to them.  Even though we’re told it’s the future you could almost imagine these events taking place today.  I was bugged by a couple of things in the issue though.  On the very last page there’s a box saying that humanity changed in a certain year. It seems a bit extraneous to mention that, as it doesn’t really have anything to do with the story.  Its also a bit cliché that the cop and the woman fall for each other so quickly, and although I shouldn’t be surprised by it, but I was really hoping for something a bit better since the rest of the story was so well told.

Overall the art style fits the story well.  We mainly see the two main characters and the others aren’t really given a whole lot of detail or personality in what they wear or who they are, they just fade into the background.  My biggest gripe though is that the artist is a bit heavy handed with thick lines that are supposed to represent shadows.  If he planned for this to be a black and white issue, like Sin City, it would have worked fairly well.  But since its color its really distracting to look at a character that looks like he’s head is splitting apart because of thick black line running down his forehead, check, and under his nose and mouth.  You know it isn’t supposed to be that way and it distracts from the story a bit.

Overall this is a well-done issue.  I really do like the fact that it’s a one off issue so that I don’t have to keep up with multiple characters or storylines.   I also really like Zenescope’s comic lines; they published the Neverland series and now this. This would not be something that I would give to everyone, but I would give it to people that like the Twilight Zone TV show and similar types of genres.