Injection #2 - Image Comics

INJECTION No. 2, June 2015

So grand is the scope of this “ongoing series” by “Image Comics” that it is arguably abundantly clear that twenty pages is simply not enough room for writer Warren Ellis to house even a single instalment of his narrative. Not and have it make a satisfying and understandable read at any rate. For Issue Two of “Injection” contains so many characters and highbrow concepts that it is plainly impossible for the English author to do any of them much justice when they are all so tightly crammed within so restricting a publication.

As a result much of this issue simply and disappointingly provides the reader with little more than a fleeting glimpse of most of the title’s supporting cast. Indeed the vast majority of the five (former) members of the Cross-Cultural Contamination Unit appear for but a handful of panels at best, as the Eagle Award-winner desperately tries to simultaneously progress each character’s very personal journey back to the side of Professor Maria Kilbride.

Fortunately however Ellis does provide Simeon Winters, a slick-looking well-dressed British Foreign Office serviceman who “kills foreign people”, with abundant ‘screen time’ and as a result ‘injects’ this mysterious yet lack-lustre storyline with some much needed action, suspense and excitement. In fact the spy’s somewhat botched assassination mission within the “Ambassade De Gran Bretagne” building is both humorously written by the Essex-born Englishman and scintillatingly well-drawn by Declan Shalvey.

Admittedly a lot of the action is strikingly similar to the creative duo’s work on the “Marvel Worldwide” 2014 superhero comic book “Moon Knight”, even down to the bald bearded three-piece suited killer’s murderous use of a handy telescopic baton. But when the drama is this utterly insane and breathlessly violent, with Winters being mercilessly hurled into furniture and ceilings by a “huge” bodyguard before becoming involved in a vicious knife-fight, such a petty qualm can easily be forgiven. Perhaps even doubly so when the introduction of the ‘gun-carrying strategist’ clearly seems to have galvanised the Irishman’s pencilling, provided colorist Jordie Bellaire with the opportunity to rather impressively use different palettes to 'highlight' bygone-based scenes and finally allowed the reader to immerse themselves in Ellis’ re-energised writing.

The 'Haunted' variant cover art of "INJECTION" No. 2 by Declan Shalvey