Nullhunter #9 // Review
From what they can tell the point of interest has completely retrofitted the exterior of the Olympos Base, Damn thing looks like a giant, angry ape or some such. They have no idea what she’s doing in that base, but they are about to find out in Nullhunter #9. Writer Michael Walsh reaches the cliax of the current story arc with artist Gustaffo Vargas. The weird blend of horror, military sci-fi and fantasy continues to find some distinctive appeal as the series slides its way across a kind of resolution to the current conflict. It’s ugly and messy, but that’s the life in the world of Nullhunter.
There are a couple of heavy-duty-looking security droids who have come to greet them as they arrive on Olympos Base. Thwyt’re asked to state their purpose. It only makes sense that they’re going to run. Elsewhere there’s a grotesque bio-mechanical organism that’s looking for its mother. Things are unlikely to end well for everyone involved, but certain stresses are quite likely to explode. Things are going to get worse before they can get better. Decisions are going to need to be made. Actions are going to need to be taken.
Walsh weaves the heavier horror of the story into the ninth issue of the series. The mash-up of futuristic tech with creepy human-mech hybrid juxtapositions have been around for as long as there has been cyberpunk, but there’s something specifically creepy and disturbing about the way that Walsh is bringing it to the page for the purposes of Nullhunter. That horror extends to the overall look and feel of the conflict. Far from looking slick or being glorified, war in Nullhunter is ugly and brutal in a series of overwhelmingly dramatic moments that all collide on the page in heavy moments of aggression.
Vargas’ art has a messiness about it that works well with Walsh’s writing. It does lose a bit of intensity in the messiness of the rendering, though. The gloopy thickness of the shadows and the bio-mechanical clutter around the edges of everything bogs-down the visuals. The resulting visual dynamic lacks the kind of kinetic power that would really be needed to deliver the power of the horror and the brutality of the action. It’s remarkably distinctive stuff visually, but the visuals feel like wading into an amorphous pool of ink and color in places.
The experiment still manages to work overall. The fusion of ancient legend with contemporary cyberpunk sci-fi set in the far future...well...it all works. There’s no breathtaking sense of insight that might have otherwise come to a more sophisticated integration between the deeper connotations of cyberpunk and the ancient legends that are being fused into it. This is kind of a pity as the cyberpunk sub-genre DOES have great potential to hack into deeper connections between ancient heroic notions and the contemporary post-modern state of existence at the birth of the age of information.
