Comic review - We3

Bulking up the content of this blog a bit: here's an ages-old review of Morrison and Quitely's We3 that I wrote for a Brighton comic shop. It never made it online. Maybe I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, but I'm happy to labour under the possibly self-deluded misapprehension that they filed it and forgot about it.

We3
DC Comics
Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely and Jamie Grant

Three domestic pets, a dog, a cat and a rabbit, are abducted by a shadowy wing of the U.S. military and transformed into state-of-the-art cyborg assassins, complete with armoured robot suits and an extensive arsenal of devastating weaponry. Just prior to being "decommissioned", they seize their opportunity to escape and head for home, their erstwhile masters in close pursuit...

Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's high-concept mini-series successfully manages to subvert the classic animal adventure story - the most obvious example being Disney's The Incredible Journey - with the speed lines, unique design and graphic ultraviolence of manga. While it's hardly unusual to see a story whose central characters are sentient animals, it is refreshing to see them tackled in a way that tries to avoid over-sentimental anthropomorphism. The story is undoubtedly moving, but Morrison elicits strong emotions from his readers without resorting to Disney's saccharine sentimentality, relying instead on the natural ingenuousness of the protagonists and the overwhelming, manufactured unfairness of their situation.

The canine leader of the group, Bandit [codenamed '1'], bears a tangible weight of responsibility for his comrades at the same time as seeking recognition and praise from the humans that they encounter along the way; the cat, Tinker ['2'], constantly threatens mutinous independence from the group and is untroubled by gratuitous killing; and Pirate ['3'], the rabbit, in keeping with his natural instincts, is the least antagonistic of the three and often attempts to placate his more bellicose team-mates when they clash. The weapons built into their cyborg suits are similarly tailored to each species' natural traits: the cat is equipped with razor-sharp, claw-like projectiles in her forepaws, while the rabbit ejects small round landmines from the rear end of his suit as he flees - much like droppings. The animals have been modified to such an extent that they can talk in a form of txt spk, employing simple phrases to communicate with humans and with each other.

The humans that they encounter are often shown only by their feet or legs, with their eyes rarely depicted inside the panel. This not only works on a literal level, in that an animal's perception is much closer to ground-level, but also represents the emotional detachment, and in some cases downright cruel treatment, with which many people treat animals. To further emphasise the gulf between species, the main human characters represent different attitudes that people have towards animals, from the hard-nosed army general who clearly delights in the grotesque transfigurations wrought by his bioweapons department, through to the kindly derelict who attempts to help them in their direst hour of need. The most constant human figure throughout the story is Dr. Roseanne Berry, a troubled figure seeking atonement for her morally suspect involvement in the We3 project. It is her need for redemption that first enables the creatures to escape their confinement, but her actions are also fundamental to their later development from dangerous tools of an uncaring government back to the harmless domestic pets they once were.

The sense of dynamic animation within Frank Quitely's still images comes not only from digital blurring effects and frozen action poses, but also from playing with accepted comic art conventions. The first of several double-page spreads is a breathtaking - and graphic - depiction of a man being cut vertically in half by chaingun fire, shown from within the hail of bullets. In another standout panel, Tinker engages a small group of infantrymen in hand-to-hand combat, fragments of which grisly assault are depicted in non-human time perception. These arresting images inject a new and distinctive style of storytelling into an otherwise fairly straightforward tale.

This book also marks the full transition of Frank Quitely's artwork into the digital arena; his detailed pencils were digitally inked and coloured by Jamie Grant, the co-owner and publisher of Glaswegian adult humour anthology Northern Lightz, in which some of Quitely's earliest published work also appeared. The effect is extremely polished, and could mark a change in Quitely's notoriously slow output when the same creators embark on their follow-up project for DC Comics, All-Star Superman. On the strength of the standards set by We3, that promises to be yet another outstanding project by a creative team who currently stand head and shoulders above most of their mainstream peers.