The Last Driver #2 // Review
Clutch has brought his daughter to work. He's a car thief. And he doesn't want her implicated with his crimes. Nevertheless, this is just something that he needed to do. Just this one little job. What could possibly go wrong? Well, somewhere off in the distance he's hearing the announcement. He's under arrest. They have him surrounded.And his daughter is right there. He could turn himself in. But she would be in implicated.Things. get tense in The Last Driver #2. Writer/artist Sean Murphy continues a dark science fiction, adventure with colorist Simon Gough. The specific of the story you might feel a little weak in places. But the whole visual package of it really accelerates it beyond any real narrative weakness.
It's a Womack. He's caught up with.Clutch. Clutch’s daughter knows what's going on. There are plenty of police. But not many actual pulses out there. They're all tech. They're all robot cops. This is going to make things ever so slightly more difficult. The only thing to do is run. Or rather drive away relief fast. Clutch could handle a high-speed chase. He knows what to expect. But he doesn't necessarily know what to expect out of artificial intelligence. The robots are going to be making decisions and normal police officer wouldn't.
Murphy is making a lot of interesting decisions with respect to the narrative. The mood and setting of the series continues to sync into the page. It's a dark future that is animated by the past. A feeling of speed on a TV or motion picture screened from the 1970s. A feeling of high-speed chases and criminals who really appreciate motor vehicles. There's a real love for the automobile in this particular series. And it's fun to see it layout. But it is kind of silly. In a good way.
And, of course, being someone who really loves automobiles, Murphy is doing a really good job of illustrating. The speed needed to really get across the feeling of car is going really, relief fast. The landscape orientation of the action keeps everything moving really, really quickly from side to side. There's a right way to capture a chase between cars on the highway and there's a wrong way to do it. Murphy is doing it incredibly well. Capturing single moments and ecstatic, artistic medium with sequential art. It's really difficult to do that and get across a feeling of a chase. Murphy's appreciation of motion and speed managed to catch the action in just the right way to maintain a high level of momentum from cover to cover in another satisfying issue.
There isn't a whole lot being explored in the plot that really feels engaging thematically. And while the story doesn't work on a deeper level in any way, that's terribly compelling, the surface level action is more than enough to keep it all going. Murphy has a salad understanding of what needs to happen in order for action to make it to the page in a way that's both emotionally and intellectually compelling on its own.
