The U.S. government has perfected a broadcast signal that will extinguish criminal thoughts.
Graham Brick, a fifty-four-year-old grifter, discovers the crime of the century that he’d been planning suddenly has been transformed into the last crime in American history because he only has 10 days before the signal goes live.
Because of the short schedule, Brick is forced to enlist the help of Kevin Cash and the beautiful Shelby Dupree, a couple of young, slick, and potentially psychotic safe crackers.
My one critical observation, one that I won’t be fully wedded to until the completion of the whole story arc, is that it feels like too big of an idea to be fully explored in three 64 page issues. The most salient details of Remender’s world that I have been able to find (and be intrigued by) is in interviews that he has conducted. With this first issue I don’t really feel all of the things that he has stated are happening. I don’t even sense a lot of it below the surface. Again, things need to play out more fully as there are two more issues but this really feels like an idea that might need more room to breathe.
The opening in medias res panels put the reader right into the thick of later events. Events that ask a lot of questions and start the tensions at high levels. Will he die? Who is holding the gun? How did it get to this?
After this brief thrashing around in the deep end the reader is grounded in the story proper which, presumably, starts before the cold opening. We meet Graham and see him as someone who see the angles and metes out some hard violence. He may be a little gray in the scalp but he shouldn’t be discounted. Ever.
Which of course is what his two partners are prepared to do from the outset. The meeting in the bar is rife with tension and when the three words “Fuck a loser” are uttered you can’t help but feel for the guy. [I won't spoil the scene, you'll have to see for yourself.]
All of these these questions and these characters will make the race to the bottom compelling to watch.
The bottom line is that The Last Days of American Crime is an auspicious start to what looks to be an ambitious crime story. The action scenes pop, the art compliments the story and it should be real interesting to see how this world is explored and how the story plays out.
A short preview can be found here.
