Injection #14 - Image Comics

INJECTION No. 14, July 2017

If it wasn’t for this comic’s horrifically over-the-top, and frankly juvenile, use of colourful metaphors, then Issue Fourteen of “Injection” would probably have pleased its 8,202 followers far more in August 2017. For whilst Warren Ellis’ prolific use of obscenities means that his narrative’s dialogue occasionally provides a modicum of humour, such as when Emma Louise Beaufort really wants her boss to “buy the iphone app” in order to prevent her from being literally sliced to pieces by giant claws of bright white light, the vast majority of this publication’s expletives simply get in the way of the storytelling, and persistently, brutally jar the reader out of the prose.

This overreliance upon Brigid Roth’s penchant for profanities is particularly disappointing considering that the rest of the Eagle Award-winner’s writing is rather good, and for once actually shows “the computer geek off the CCCU [Cross Culture-Contamination Unit] squad” getting into some seriously deadly fisticuffs with a couple of shovel-wielding louts; both of which come to very bloody ends courtesy of a Stanley knife across the throat and a screwdriver buried deep into the jugular. Such a gory scrap really is incredibly well story-boarded and smacks of when Ellis, artist Declan Shalvey and colorist Jordie Bellaire were seemingly at the top of their game in 2014, creating “Moon Knight” for “Marvel Worldwide”.

Equally as impressive is this twenty-page periodical’s genuinely chilling confrontation between the Irish dark-skinned hacker and “that old cow Kernick.” There’s a genuine “American Werewolf In London” vibe to Mellion Moor and the complicity of its locals, which the elderly bespectacled Professor beautifully encapsulates. Her boastful admission that she chained “that guy on the moor” to the ring knowing he would later be torn to shreds by creatures “from the Other World” is hackle-raising stuff, particularly when Derwa is shown to be ably supported by a veritable horde of shadowy, yellow-eyed sprites.

Regrettably, for all his good work sketching out this comic’s dynamic fight scene, and some simply breath-taking vistas of the soggy, rain-soaked countryside, the majority of Shalvey’s artwork for this edition is disappointingly somewhat off-key and wooden-looking. The Dublin-born illustrator’s sketching of Roth’s eyes, nose and mouth appears particularly inconsistent and resultantly, the lead character strangely only appears at her best when drawn with her hoodie predominantly masking her facial features.

Writer: Warren Ellis, Artist: Declan Shalvey, and Color: Jordie Bellaire