Blade Runner Origins #6

Blade Runner Origins #6

Titan Comics 2021

Written by K. Perkins & Mellow Brown

Illustrated by Fernando Dagnino

Coloured by Marco Lesko

Lettered by Jim Campbell

On the trail of an escaped experimental replicant, Detective Cal Moreaux becomes the hunted.

This is my favourite part of the franchise, this book right here. The origin of the Replicant Division is beyond a doubt the best entrance to the world of Blade Runner as it will give you everything you need to know and understand what this is all about. You can transition to the main Blade Runner title and the films after reading these issues so yes this really is the best place to jump on board. We are seeing Cal’s case and how it unfolds and continues to show that replicants can be just as complicated as humans with the same issues and traits regardless of what and who they are. Plus with different models and such out there things are bound to get more complicated which is something we love seeing.

I love, love, love the way that this is being told. The story & plot development we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. The character development we see through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter. This really fleshes them out and brings their personalities to forefront and lets us see who these people are, how we relate to them, empathise with them and makes them that much more believable. The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages we are pulled deeper and deeper into this with all this amazing intrigue.

How we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen is magnificently rendered. What I love about these layers is how they manage to open up new avenues that we want to see explored. Whether the established avenues or new ones are explored or not they add all this sensational depth, dimension and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is beautifully achieved.

The interiors here are absolutely bloody marvellous. There are these moments, like the eyes on page six, that give the reader pause because of how well they come across and really hit the reader unexpectedly. The linework is exquisitely rendered and how we see the varying weights and techniques being utilised to create this level & quality of detail in the work that we see is mindbogglingly gorgeous. That we see backgrounds utilised so heavily and that they enhance and expand the moments as well as how they work within the composition of the panels to bring out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story is brilliantly rendered. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkably talented eye for storytelling. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows a stellar eye for how colour works. The applications and the blending of what we see really work to set the mood, tone and feel for every given moment.

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I love this series, I really do. It has all this drama, intrigue and action that would make a Hollywood blockbuster, or make one feel jealous. You cannot walk away from this series without being changed in some way because these characters are as diverse as you can get and the way they interact with each other just shows that regardless of the year opinions will continue to vary which then turns to blind belief and an unwillingness to change their opinions. It is real life realistic and it’s this that makes this the kind of series you won’t want to stop reading.