Previews for 11/22 – Boom Studios

The good folks at Boom Studios were nice enough to send along an advance copy of Talent #4. While I don’t have interior art to offer, I can say this book seems to finally be coming through on its great potential, though I’m not sure how much of a future the title has. Confused? I’ll explain.

Talent follows a man who is on board a plane that crashes – blown up by an assassin/terrorist. This one man survives, imbued with the spirits of the hundreds of other people on board. Their deaths were unnecessary, and the protagonist works to return a balance to the world by cleaning up the victims’ unfinished business. To aid him, he can take on the abilities (talents) of those victims, but only until their business is concluded/avenged/etc.

This issue sees the survivor fighting directly with the evil group who blew up the plane and apparently are trying to cast the world into darkness. He takes on the talent of a hired killer who died on the plane, lending the book a nice bit of excitement.

My concern is that the gimmick, while clever, limits the life-span of the book. There are only so many victims, and only so many can be super-killers. For that matter, only so many can be world class actors, etc. And when their talents fade, so do those of the protagonist. I’m a bit afraid we’ll soon see signs of the creative team reaching for unrealistic talents, or breaking their self-imposed rules.

For now, the book is good, probably the best out there by Boom.