Writer: Christopher Sebela
Pencils: Ro Stein
Inks: Ted Brandt
Colors: Triona Farrell
Letters Cardinal Rae
Published by Image
Crowded is contagious fun. It’s easy to see after you put
down the first issue why the entire creative team has been talking and tweeting
about it incessantly. It’s not just easy publicity and hype to get the word out
about their latest project. They are proud of it and rightfully so. Christopher
Sebela and his team have crafted a very plausible reality where there is an app to literally make anything a part of the "gig economy"--even murder. In the current day where you can order a carpool ride
or food delivery from complete strangers for a fee, Crowded takes this idea as
far as it can. Charlotte Ellison’s world is one where you can double dip into
multiple doggy walking services, loan out your finest evening wear, and rent
yourself out as a best friend for a price in order to make ends meet. She’s sassy and stylish. She appears confident
because she’s been doing it forever. She’s a woman who has perfected the art of
flexibility to meet the on-demand life her smartphone affords her
Charlotte is also the target of a crowd-funded online
campaign that has made her the target for assassination. The enormous purse
goes to the person that punches her ticket. Good thing there’s an app for that.
Charlotte hires Vita through the DEFEND app to be her
bodyguard for hire and keep her alive as she’s taking fire and racing for cover
in broad daylight as every granny and corporate worker bee are out to cash in
on what seems like an easy payday. Vita lives by strict rules in order to keep
her client’s alive and to keep her 100% success rate in tact. Her 1.4 star
rating on the DEFEND app says otherwise.
Chris finds a great balance of humor and carnage in this
title. As with many of his projects before that have contained high concept gun
play and assassins, the script knows when to take a beat for a joke or a body
to land so that it’s most effective for the story better rather than his own
amusement. Originally, I was a little nervous that there was already a shotgun
blast and a body count before the first page ended. I feared that it was going
to be too much too quickly, but the story sticks the landing when it utilizes the Tarantino
device of giving you the answers first and then asking the questions later
making the exposition all the more engaging.
The amount of thought that the Crowded creative team has put
a lot of thought in how these characters look and speak so you get a sense of
them right out the gate is incredibly apparent. Ted’s inks over Ro’s pencil work
give the comic an old-school feel that sits comfortably in its new-school world.
The art team executes the difficult task of building upon Sebula’s dialogue
with how the characters gesture. Charlotte’s movement compliments her attitude and
Vis’ rigid demeanor keeps the reader at arm’s length in just a single panel
many times over throughout the issue.
Crowded shares some DNA with another comic from years ago I
loved called Scud: The Disposable Assassin, that explored the idea of paying to
have someone killed off on a whim that utilized warped humor and took place in
an insane world caught in a war between a hijacked Heaven and an overthrown
Hell (I’m seriously underselling just how mad this title was). It had complex
characters with conflicted feelings exploring how far they would go to be with
the person they cared about. It’s because of some of these similarities that I
was particularly fond of the issue after I was finished. Now I’m more excited
to see what is at the root of Crowded as the series continues when that same
type of familiar insanity is all taking place in a world that is so recognizable
to our own reality today.
-KirkFM
