Pilot Season: Genius

Top Cow is publishing six one-shot comics in a program called Pilot Season. The idea is, readers buy the six books and vote on their favorites on Top Cow's MySpace page starting in August. This is the second year for the program. Last year's Pilot Season books were all revitalizations of existing Top Cow properties, such as Ripclaw and Cyblade, so I paid little attention to it (although if I can find the Ripclaw book somewhere I might pick it up, since it was written by Scalped's Jason Aaron). This year's crop of pilots interests me more, since none seem to be based on ideas I passed on the first time around.

The most intriguing to me--and the first one I've bought--is Genius, written by Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman and drawn by Afua Richardson. Bernardin and Freeman wrote last year's The Highwaymen, a semi-futuristic action miniseries that I liked a lot. Genius is about a prodigy in the art of warfare--one who emerges not on a formal battlefield, but on the gang-run streets of Los Angeles. She's a 17-year-old named Destiny, and in this issue, she declares war on the cops.

There's one cop who can see what's coming: Detective Reggie Grey, who notices patterns of decreased inter-gang violence and realizes they're being bonded together against a common enemy.

I think this Pilot Season gimmick gives creators a tough line to walk. It's a one-shot, so the story has to be satisfying on its own. Four of these six books won't see a second issue. At the same time, it's a pilot. It's meant to leave the reader wanting more. It's on this level that Genius really succeeds.

While there's action in the book, much of it is build up. Seeing Destiny's impromptu army take out some cops is viscerally exciting in a Grand Theft Auto kind of way, but Richardson's art--despite attractive figurework and distinct characterizations--goes for the backgroundless pose a little too often to position everyone in space. There's adrenaline aplenty, but the tactics of the scene aren't conveyed as effectively as they could be. (Make that should be--this book is all about Destiny's strategic and tactical talent, so this is a problematic shortcoming.)

On the other hand, the concept is killer. And we see that the two main characters, Destiny and Grey, are bound together by a critical moment in their past that neither is aware of. That's certainly worth exploring. And I certainly want to see how this war progresses. Destiny at one point makes a speech that sounds like her neighborhood is seceding from Los Angeles, if not the nation itself. There's a lot of potential here. If the second issue of this book were out today, I'd buy it on the spot.

I do have a slight quibble, though: Troy Peteri's lettering font is a little obtrusive. Maybe it'll grow on me, but I'm betting it won't. Also, the book's logo (in an ornate gothic-bling font) might make the book hard to spot on the stands. For a week or so, my comic shop had flyers up advertising a signing last Friday, and I still didn't know the book existed, simply because I couldn't read the logo while walking. And if a flyer on a door I'm walking through can't stop my step, I doubt an unfamiliar book in a sea of other comics would do a better job.

Now, though, I'm looking for the book. If we're lucky enough to get another issue, you can bet I'll find it.

Rob