(Titan Comics, 2014)

Writer: Liam Sharp & Christina McCormack
Artist: Liam Sharp

Story: The story focuses on Charlie Chance, the daughter to a playboy millionaire and gentleman thief who taught her all the tricks of the trade. As an adult, she’s now given up the lifestyle, but one big secret left behind by her father is about to come to back and haunt her. In the form of the titular character, Cap Stone, who’s suddenly gone missing.

Review: Now this was an interesting comic, as it surprised me that it wasn’t about the title character at all but about some random girl with no relation to him. Charlie Cox is an interesting character, and we get to know all about her in this issue. In fact so much so that the entire first issue is dedicated to her narrating about her exciting life growing up – until a last panel reveal that sets up the coming story.

This wasn’t a bad issue in the slightest, and it kept my attention all the way through no problem, but it does have the same problems that I pointed out in my Mono review where such care is taken in setting up the character so that we know about them that not much ends up actually happening in the issue. And thus again the issue finishes in this awkward spot where it feels like we’re pausing the action because we ran out of room.

Mono was a wordy book, but this is a really, really wordy book with very few silent panels – if any – so that we can get all we can out of Charlie concerning life beginning as a cat burglar, and then how one traumatic event set the course for her life as a delinquent not stealing but just giving her parents the hardest time as parents. A rebel, so to speak.

I’m sure most of, if not all, of this will come into play later, and I hope both Sharp and McCormack are setting us up for something really good. But with a first storyline title being “Captain Stone is Missing…” and the whole first issue is mostly about the life and times of some girl, well it’s very awkward to say the least.

The art has a painted style to it, with a lot of meaning behind most of the imagery seen within. With so many captions going on it’s hard to match every panel to everything being said, and so most of what Sharp chooses to do is do big, single-page splashes that invoke the sense of what Charlie is trying to get through in her story.

I do like the art, but since I don’t know where this story is going I can’t say if it really fits the style of it yet. Had this been some one-shot about the life of Charlie Chance I think it would’ve, but until we see if there will be any action or anything else besides Charlie’s narrations I can’t be too sure.

Still, I do recommend giving this a shot. If only to see Sharp’s art. The story needs a lot of working out, but perhaps it’ll pick up in issue #2 now that we know every nook and cranny of the main character we’re dealing with. Who knows?

Final Score: 3 Stolen Gems out of 5

Derrick is a born and raised otaku with a love for comics, anime, manga and movies. The full list is pretty long, but that’s just the basics. Stories set in space are his bread and butter.

You can find more of his writing at IndieComix.net