Injection #7 - Image Comics

INJECTION No. 7, February 2016

Warren Ellis’ somewhat lifeless almost stagnant narrative for Issue Seven of “Injection” unfortunately rather confirms the opinion of “Dark Horse Comics” President and Publisher Mike Richardson that whilst the sociocultural commentator is a master “of the comics art”, the Essex-born writer’s penmanship isn’t necessarily “always good.” For whilst the opening moments of this twenty-page periodical are entertaining enough in its coverage of a ‘good old-fashioned’ police foot chase within the confines of the Local Slice eatery, the pulse-pounding action is soon regrettably replaced by copious dialogue-heavy colloquies as New York-based detectives Diaz and Branch hold their suspect for questioning and Vivek Headland telephonically converses with former Cross Culture-Contamination Unit team-mates Robin Morel and Maria Kilbride.

In fact many of this edition’s 12,459 followers in February 2016 probably felt that nothing else actually happened within this comic’s storyline until towards its very end when the multiple Eagle Award-winner seemingly takes a note out of Arthur Conan Doyle’s book and depicts the “Logician and Ethicist with an interest in security” at his deductive best investigating “the Van Der Zee man-cave.” This Holmesian sequence of pictures, quaintly panelled, genuinely proves an engaging read as the dusky-skinned Precognitive meticulously works his way around the crime scene collecting samples of “intense instances of electromagnetic energy” and “vaginal ectoplasm.”

Sadly however this “unique Ellis brand of storytelling” isn’t anywhere near enough to save what is otherwise a miserably monotonous magazine. Admittedly Headland himself provides a modicum of interest every time he makes an appearance, and even arguably is capable of raising the odd chuckle as he chides a prisoner for delivering “a carefully-sliced and superbly seasoned cooked human bicep to my home.” But such satisfying moments are lamentably fleeting and hardly worthy of the $2.99 cover price.

Worse yet though is Declan Shalvey’s predominantly lack-lustre pencilling. There’s a definite pace to the Irish artist’s first few pages, as Red the Butler smashes his way through a locked diner’s door and the accompanying Manhattan Police graphically shoot out the elbow of their quarry. But just as soon as the kitchen is sealed and the bleeding stopped, the former “Moon Knight” illustrator’s drawings disappointingly appear mechanically unexceptional and even comically amateurish at best.

The regular cover art of "INJECTION" No. 7 by Declan Shalvey