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di Filippo is certainly being true to the characters. He's also taking the story to a darker place than it's been since the child abuse storyline in the last volume.
For some reason, he felt the need to set the story in the here and now(ish) instead of the more or less undefined time where the Neopolis of the first two volumes existed. The War on Terra is a fact, as is (maybe) the attack on the WTC. It's never specifically referenced, only alluded to, but the time frame is specifically referenced, so it couldn't really be anything else. This allowed di Filippo to start making some certain points about politics and repression -- interestingly, as far as we can tell at the moment, the politics storyline and the repression storyline are somewhat independent of each other, with the exception that the politically-induced firing of Traynor (on the absolute thinnest of pretexts, and a vaguely competent mayor wouldn't even have tried it) kicks off the repression storyline. I think this is going to be showing the establishment of a police state by other means than we're seeing in real life; in this case, the police state itself is being imposed on the police and only on them, as far as we can see. It may be that if it proves successful, the police state will be spread out to encompass the rest of Neopolis.
Compared to Moore and Gene Ha, this edition of Top Ten is unusually sly. There's the wonderful, clanging irony of new Chief Sean Cindercott's statement on the cover: "Dark days demand a real man to lead the police force -- and I am ALL MAN!" Because, of course, depending on how you define it, the one thing he is not is "all man". Not below the neck, anyway. Although his hands seem to be real, but if he were only wearing a suit of armor, why would it be steam powered? In any event, given proportions, it does seem clear that nothing below the waist is human. (HA! Clanging Irony! I slay me! ... OK, done now.) (Also, what the hell is "strontium alert"? What color is strontium? What does it look like? How on earth will anyone know what that means?) It also turns out that the robots have a drug epidemic. The robots. They're abusing hextacy and crystal math. There's also RexCorp building, where the head of RexCorp, Rex Ruthor, is having a press conference. (Rex bears more than a passing resemblance to Scooby Doo.)
The art style is OK. Very nicely detailed. In some ways, a bit too detailed; Smax just looks ... wrong. Gene Ha and Xander Cannon didn't give him that much line detain in the original 12 issues, and the Smax title was highly stylized. It just seems strange to see that much realistic detail on the big blue guy.
One concern I have is that the story juggles so very many characters, both new and old. I get the impression that the story isn't going to settle down to focus on any one character's viewpoint, even within a single issue. That may wind up making it a bit harder to follow until the end.
I hope that Di Filippo can keep up the storylines and storytelling. The setup has been very interesting so far; I just don't know how he can manage to wrap all this up in five issues without it seeming terribly rushed.
For some reason, he felt the need to set the story in the here and now(ish) instead of the more or less undefined time where the Neopolis of the first two volumes existed. The War on Terra is a fact, as is (maybe) the attack on the WTC. It's never specifically referenced, only alluded to, but the time frame is specifically referenced, so it couldn't really be anything else. This allowed di Filippo to start making some certain points about politics and repression -- interestingly, as far as we can tell at the moment, the politics storyline and the repression storyline are somewhat independent of each other, with the exception that the politically-induced firing of Traynor (on the absolute thinnest of pretexts, and a vaguely competent mayor wouldn't even have tried it) kicks off the repression storyline. I think this is going to be showing the establishment of a police state by other means than we're seeing in real life; in this case, the police state itself is being imposed on the police and only on them, as far as we can see. It may be that if it proves successful, the police state will be spread out to encompass the rest of Neopolis.
Compared to Moore and Gene Ha, this edition of Top Ten is unusually sly. There's the wonderful, clanging irony of new Chief Sean Cindercott's statement on the cover: "Dark days demand a real man to lead the police force -- and I am ALL MAN!" Because, of course, depending on how you define it, the one thing he is not is "all man". Not below the neck, anyway. Although his hands seem to be real, but if he were only wearing a suit of armor, why would it be steam powered? In any event, given proportions, it does seem clear that nothing below the waist is human. (HA! Clanging Irony! I slay me! ... OK, done now.) (Also, what the hell is "strontium alert"? What color is strontium? What does it look like? How on earth will anyone know what that means?) It also turns out that the robots have a drug epidemic. The robots. They're abusing hextacy and crystal math. There's also RexCorp building, where the head of RexCorp, Rex Ruthor, is having a press conference. (Rex bears more than a passing resemblance to Scooby Doo.)
The art style is OK. Very nicely detailed. In some ways, a bit too detailed; Smax just looks ... wrong. Gene Ha and Xander Cannon didn't give him that much line detain in the original 12 issues, and the Smax title was highly stylized. It just seems strange to see that much realistic detail on the big blue guy.
One concern I have is that the story juggles so very many characters, both new and old. I get the impression that the story isn't going to settle down to focus on any one character's viewpoint, even within a single issue. That may wind up making it a bit harder to follow until the end.
I hope that Di Filippo can keep up the storylines and storytelling. The setup has been very interesting so far; I just don't know how he can manage to wrap all this up in five issues without it seeming terribly rushed.