{"id":29357,"date":"2024-02-10T09:00:04","date_gmt":"2024-02-10T09:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=29357"},"modified":"2024-02-07T18:37:50","modified_gmt":"2024-02-07T18:37:50","slug":"numbercruncher-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2024\/02\/10\/numbercruncher-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Numbercruncher"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nBy Simon Spurrier<\/strong> & P.J. Holden<\/strong>, with Jordie Bellaire<\/strong> (Titan Comics)
\nISBN: 978-1-78276-004-7 (HB\/Digital edition)<\/p>\n

Sometimes a story just cries out to be told – especially if your tastes run to the sentimentally cynical, soppily savage or wide-eyed yet jaded. If that\u2019s you, Numbercruncher<\/strong> will confirm all your suspicions about life whilst providing a really good time.<\/p>\n

The tale – by Simon Spurrier (Judge Dredd<\/strong>, X-Men: Legacy<\/strong>, Six-Gun Gorilla<\/strong>, Damn Them All<\/strong>, John Constantine: Hellblazer<\/strong>) & P.J. Holden (also your man Dredd<\/strong>, Rogue Trooper<\/strong>, Battlefields<\/strong>, Terminator\/Robocop<\/strong> Skullduggery Pleasant<\/strong>, The Moon Looked Down and<\/strong> Laughed<\/strong>) – began as a creator-owned project in The Judge Dredd<\/strong> Megazine<\/strong> before being expanded into a 4-issue miniseries at Titan Comics: a clever, controversial confection that will confound, delight and astound lovers of metaphysical whimsy, romantic fantasy and unnecessarily extreme violence.<\/p>\n

Like 1939\u2019s The Wizard of Oz<\/strong>, Werewolf by Night<\/strong> (2022) and especially A Matter of Life and Death<\/strong>, this unearthly tale is told on two separate levels of existence, differentiated by full-colour mundanity sections and monochrome views of The Afterlife. Unlike those movies, it\u2019s a nasty and wittily vicious piece of work; just like handy geezer Bastard Zane<\/em>, AKA operative #494<\/em>, employed by The Divine Calculator<\/em> to enforce Karmic Accountancy<\/em> and keep souls circulating through the great cosmic All.<\/p>\n

The Universe is just numbers and God<\/em> is a mean, pedantic bean-counter, only concerned with the smooth running of his Grand Algorithm. Unfortunately, it all starts to fall apart when Zane is tasked by the weaselly Big Boss with stopping an in-love but dying young mathematician from gaming the system. SuperGenius Richard Thyme<\/em> in his final seconds of mortal life, has a Eureka moment and divines the true and exact nature of everything\u2026 and how to manipulate it\u2026<\/p>\n

Armed with that inspirational knowledge, Thyme\u2019s soul arrives before the Writer in the Grand Ledger and wheedles another spin on the Karmic Wheel – Reincarnation.<\/p>\n

Brilliant Richard had been utterly in love with a dippy hippy chick named Jessica Reed<\/em>, and when he bargains for another chance at a life with her, the petty-minded Divine Calculator gleefully accepts the proposition. Thyme will be reborn, with all memories intact, but when this second life ends, his soul will be gainfully employed – just like Zane – by the Karmic Accountancy Agency<\/em> as a collector. Standard term of employment is for eternity\u2026 unless he can convince someone to take his place. The indentured operatives call it \u201cRecirculation\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n

There is only one get-out: a \u201cZero-clause\u201d which means that if Thyme can live a life completely and totally without sin, his contract becomes null and void. But who could possibly live a mortal life without the slightest transgression?<\/p>\n

Naturally, The Accountant won\u2019t play fair: stacking the deck so reborn Richard is unable to even get near his lost love until it\u2019s too late. However, when Zane finally shows up in AD 2035, eagerly expecting to close the case-file and retire with Thyme taking his long-suffering place in The Register, the frustrated, cheated SuperGenius plays his own trump card\u2026<\/p>\n

He\u2019d always expected to be short-changed and made his own Karmic side-deal. By selling his contract to another Accountancy operative, he had bought another life, and as psychotically furious Bastard Zane soon sees, Thyme has pulled this trick over and over again. No matter how often Richard dies, he\u2019s already being born again somewhere else\u2026<\/p>\n

With the mathematician\u2019s sold-&-resold soul promised to practically every agent in the Afterlife, Zane\u2019s only hope of retirement rests in killing the canny lad\u2019s each and every reincarnation whilst simultaneously slaughtering every Karmic operative who\u2019s been suckered into a deal with the lovesick little sod\u2026 On Earth, despite perpetual setbacks, each brief existence inches Richard slowly ever closer to Jess. That should make his eventual capture inevitable – but even here the smart guy has an incredible Plan B in operation: one even the Supreme Architect of the Cosmos didn\u2019t see coming and one which may well undo the Algorithm underpinning Everything That Is\u2026<\/p>\n

Poignant, funny, outrageously gory, gloriously rude and wickedly clever, this is a ferociously upbeat, hilariously dark black comedy no insufferable<\/span> incurable romantic could possibly resist. Moreover, for all us dyed-in-the-wool comics freaks, there\u2019s a host of background features included. Interspersed between a gallery of covers and variants plus unused iterations and loads of original art, roughs and sketches, an \u2018Author\u2019s Note\u2019<\/em> explores the genesis of the tale, further expanded upon in \u2018A Comic for Talking to God – an interview with Brian Truitt of USA Today\u2019<\/em>. A discussion and explanation of Jordie Bellaire\u2019s colouring process is the focus of \u2018Working Flat-Out\u2019 <\/em>and \u2018Birth Placement\u2019<\/em> details the procedure for creating a cover, before the usual Creator\u2019s Biographies ends things on a knowledgeable note.<\/p>\n

Love, Death, Sex, more Death, Rebirth, lots of Death and Numbers: there\u2019s your Meaning of Life right there\u2026
\n\u2122 & \u00a9 2013 Simon Spurrier & P.J. Holden. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Simon Spurrier & P.J. Holden, with Jordie Bellaire (Titan Comics) ISBN: 978-1-78276-004-7 (HB\/Digital edition) Sometimes a story just cries out to be told – especially if your tastes run to the sentimentally cynical, soppily savage or wide-eyed yet jaded. If that\u2019s you, Numbercruncher will confirm all your suspicions about life whilst providing a really … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Numbercruncher”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[102,105,148,107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy","category-mature-reading","category-romance","category-science-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-7Dv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29357"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29359,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29357\/revisions\/29359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}