By Rick Remender & Jerome Opeña (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 987-1-59307-766-2
Fear Agent debuted from Image Comics in 2005 and ran for eleven issues before folding. It was subsequently picked up by Dark Horse in 2007 with the first tale represented in an explosive collection as Re-Ignition. It introduced dissolute, Mark Twain-spouting, alcoholic Texan freelance pest-control operative Heath Huston: the original Man With a Past But No Future…
One of the last humans in existence, he was hunting aliens and eradicating outer-space thingies for a fee, looking for a way to end it all on his own terms, when he got suckered into triggering a nigh-inescapable trap to destroy what remained of Earth by bombarding it with “Feedersâ€.
The flesh-eating horrors can only be stopped by blowing up any planet they land on and Huston realised the plot was another attempt by the Dressite Empire – Earth’s greatest enemy – to finish the job they started decades ago, when they tried to wipe out mankind and only the legendary Fear Agents were (barely) able to stop them…
Huston – claiming to be the only survivor of that august cadre of warriors – barely escaped the Dressite trap, taking with him feisty, surly warp scientist Mara Esperanza – last survivor of space station Glentbin – and raced to stop the wave of ravenous, unstoppable Feeder larvae hurtling towards Earth aboard a convoy of deadly Trojan Horse ships to eradicate the slowly-rebuilding human race.
Until now his only companion had been Annie, a sentient AI spaceship who hated Mara on sight. Now, thanks to more Dressite treachery, they all fell together into another trap. However, the wicked plotters underestimated the astounding Annie, who contrived to ride their deadly warp-wave and dumped the humans – alive but lost – on a strange alien world where they become embroiled in an apocalyptic war between creatures of flesh and monsters of metal.
As the conflict proceeded and Huston fretted that Feeders were inexorably closing on Earth, he realised that he was lost not just in space but also time. Savouring a chance to preserve his homeworld centuries before any marauding ETs ever attacked, Huston embarked on a crazy raid with his meat-based allies that went horribly, irretrievably wrong. And then he died.
This second volume (representing Image issues #5-10) opens with the time-lost reprobate somehow battling giant brains and getting on really rather extraordinarily well with the sultry and completely unpredictable Mara, only to be given a tantalising glimpse of possible personal futures just as Annie warns them that they are in orbit above Earth.
The scenes below are utterly appalling, but as Huston tools up to go down fighting the now gigantic mature Feeders, the many wars he has fought blur and a new element enters the baffling picture: a previously unknown coalition of races which arrests him for causing a time anomaly…
Thrown into a ghastly Gen-Pop of otherworldly malefactors, Heath devolves into an even more disgusting wreck, slaughtering other inmates and stealing their drugs. Utterly unrepentant, he is a pathetic addict when finally charged and doesn’t even notice when his accusers let slip that this is the thirteenth time a Heath Huston has stood before them…
Left to rot in the worst of all imaginable jails, he sinks into addiction and barely understands when he is rescued by Annie and Mara and arrives (via a telling flashback which recounts the day his family died and the alien invaders first hit his homeworld) on an Earth that couldn’t possibly exist, a Terra where other Fear Agents still fight against ghastly all-consuming monsters. A world where his dead wife Charlotte is president of all that remains of humanity…
Confused? Good, you’re supposed to be, but if you stick with this astoundingly compelling rollicking rollercoaster ride everything will become even more cosmically confounding before eventually slotting neatly into place. Pandering to your juvenile desires to see monsters, space-babes, ray-gun blasts and humongous explosions whilst deftly straining your brain with deviously clever extrapolations of classic science fiction memes, this collection comes with a sketchbook section from illustrator Jerome Opeña: affording readers a powerfully character-driven, fast, furious, frantic, thrilling, manic and exceedingly clever, balls-to-the-wall Sci Fi romp which exults in the best OTT traditions of 2000AD, and has all the adrenalin-fuelled fun any fantasy aficionado could want.
Once upon a time science fiction was hard, fast all-encompassing action wrapped in impossible ideas, but over the years films like Star Wars and TV shows like Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica slowly pacified, ameliorated, crossbred and bastardised the form until it became simple window-dressing for cop stories, westerns and war yarns…
Rick Remender clearly loves the old-fashioned, wide-eyed wonder stuff too, and with artistic collaborator Opeña revels in sublimely impossible, mind-bending adventurous Amazing Stories to remind us all of what we’ve been missing.
Fear Agent was a breath of fresh air when it came out and remains one of very best cosmic comics experiences around. If you’re old enough, Sentient enough and Earthling enough, this is a series you must see before you die, have your brain-engrams recorded and are cloned into a new form unable to enjoy terrific fiction feasts.
© 2006, 2007 Rick Remender & Tony Moore. All rights reserved. All characters and distinctive likenesses are ™ Rick Remender & Tony Moore.