JEREMIAH HARM #1

By: Kurt Amacker
Review Date: Thursday, February 09, 2006

With JEREMIAH HARM, Boom! brings us a nice little prison break story set in a world that fans of HEAVY METAL will enjoy. For good or ill, the story rings similar to ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, but not so much that John Carpenter's going to sue or anything. After wayward aliens Dak Moira and Ayoma Skiver escape Penal Array 024-Prime (prison) with an android called Brune S'Maze, they "bump" (teleport) out of Dominion to a desolate rim world once called Earth. Their captors, the Enforcers, know they have no jurisdiction outside of Dominion, so they call outside help. They unleash Jeremiah Harm with a questionable promise for freedom if he succeeds. Harm is a fairly straightforward sci-fi badass -- cigar smoking, trench coat wearing, gun carrying, and ass kicking. This is essentially Snake Plissken or one of Schwarzeneggar's characters.

Outside of its not-terribly-original plot, JEREMIAH HARM offers some meat for fans of sci-fi action. Harm interrogates an alien about Dak's whereabouts and pulls out one of his eyes before blowing him up with a plasma charge in a minor act of mercy (as opposed to killing him slowly). Dak, Ayoma, and S'Maze feel so wretchedly deplorable that you can't help but want them to die by the end of the arc. It's pretty gritty stuff, though the creative team keeps the actual red stuff to a minimum. Rael Lyra's outstanding art contributes to the sleazy HEAVY METAL feel, and whomever at Imaginary Friends Studio colored this complimented the pencil-work perfectly. This is a damn good looking comic. Honestly, Lyra's detailed, jumbled, chaotic art offers more delight and originality than the story itself.

Fans of sci-fi action will probably enjoy JEREMIAH HARM, though they won't find anything they haven't seen before. It doesn't break any new ground, but it's an agreeable fix if you dig big guns and aliens. Everyone else should have a look at it for the art. Whether the series blossoms or flounders remains to be seen.

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