Review #4: Hit List #1 (of 5)

Hit List 1 of 5

STORY & WRITER: Ralph Tedesco

Pencils: Sami Kivela

Colors: Bry an Valenza

Letters: Jim Campbell

Editors: Ralph Tedesco

“Are we ever truly safe from evil? What if you had the means to play God, choosing who lives and dies? Threats exist all around us and the lives of so many have been ruined by others’ evil deeds. A man seeks justice and yearns for a world where the hardcore criminals are simply gone from it. But what can one man truly accomplish in a war against evil? Maybe one man isn’t enough.”

I read these opening words of the first issue of the miniseries Hit List from Zenescope and initially thought I was in for a supernatural thriller; perhaps a Constantine-esque story or perhaps something more subtle like Wanted. But I instead found myself wanting by the end of the book.

The actual story of this book is of a group of assassins working within Philadelphia taking out various members of an organization known as The Brown House. And so far that’s all that can really be said. Why is that? There was a strong lack of clear information presented to the reader in the first issue and felt very light story-wise.

While it is true that introductory comics have the burden of trying to relay potentially a lot of information to the reader in a limited number of pages, this comic doesn’t really tell you nearly enough. There is no narration, no real exposition and none of the dialogue really tells you anything. There isn’t enough information relayed to the reader to know who to care about or even understand what is really going on in the story.

The book begins at a dinner in North East Philly and a couple comes out of the restaurant having a conversation that seems potentially related to a bigger story. But nothing is made clear about what they are talking about other than some chauvinistic tendencies on the part of the guy, and then the two are gunned down by a mysterious woman. Later, from the one piece of exposition in the comic book, we find in the form of a news broadcast that they are members of the Brown House Bishops, which in such newscast is called a crime organization.

Throughout the rest of the book we get glimpses of the an array of others that seem to be allied with the shooter in the first scene to form some sort of a group of assassins. And we do get a sense that these assassins lead “normal lives” outside of this work. But the only thing we know for sure is all the other assassins are upset by the initial woman, Rian, not because of the murder but because she was sloppy about it and the bodies were found. Otherwise most of the other characters are only briefly touched on and it is never clear who the reader should be keeping track of and who are just victims or bystanders.

None of this is to say that Hit List is a poor comic book: the dialogue is believable and at times clever if somewhat lacking in content, the art is well done and the concept seems sound. But something seemed lost in either the translation of Ralph Tedesco’s story idea to what ended up on the page or in the segmentation of the arc. It is very plausible that the apparent weaknesses to this issue are more than compensated with issue #2. So with that hope, I will continue reading it and see if the story picks up. But as a hook, this first issue is lacking. I will let you know how things go in the next issue and perhaps at that time will eat my words here, but for now I’m giving Hit list 5 out of 10 capes.

Don’t forget to check out Zenescope here:  http://www.zenescope.com/