Blade Runner 2019 is co-written by Michael Green who also co-wrote the brilliant Blade Runner 2049, but set in the same time as the first Blade Runner (1982) movie. His co-writer is Mike Johnson and the art by Andres Guinaldo. There of course is a dedication to Rutger Hauer. The cover by Christian Ward has the silhouetted figure of Detective Ash leaping across ledges with the background of the Japanese woman who was in the original Blade Runner’s electronic billboard. This is Los Angeles of the future, dystopian, and involving Replicants, artifical beings that look like humans, but are more powerful. Ash Ashina works for the police and sent to investiagate the missing wife and child of business owner Alexander Selwyn. She finds their crashed spinner, flying car, before the cybernetics in her body shut down! Then, we have the family members, Isobel and Cleo, on the run! We have a flashback narration by Ash when she was a child and diagnosed with an unworkable spine so her mother leaves her.
We have Ash walking the L.A. streets with the Off World billboard overhead. It is interesting to see the future world caught with the wealthy off worlders and the desperate people still in the bowels of the world. She enters a building with photos of people called Aphrodite. Ash has tracked a call from the Spinner to the chop shop. A man, working the late shift, interrupts her. Ash draws her gun. He explains that Isobel was there looking for a “birthmark consult.” She leaves her card. The mystery continues, we are getting pieces, and an intriguing pov character. Mother Isabel and daughter Cleo are making their way through the rubble of the underground. They are found by two adults who have been ordered by The Skin. We get a large half-splash of refugees and the man explains that those who can’t survive on the streets go underground. He takes her to a woman whom Isabel identifies as The Lung. Ash is in her spinner working out the play of the chop shop worker. She had a contact follow the man. Ash enters the hotel Carleton and meets a man, Mr. Bellingham, who shows her in. She notes that she doesn’t use the Voight and Kampff machine used to detect Replicants.
Ash gets suspicious and when Mr. Bellingham goes for his tea, she draws out her gun wanting to know his inception date as a Replicant. He says that The Skin gave him an elderly appearance. She questions Bellingham about Isobel and he knocks away her gun! Ash isn’t able to get a strong interrogation from Bellingham. She contacts Alexander Selwyn who hired her for this job. Ash’s detective mind is now suspicous of Selwyn. Cleo is getting lonely and her mother consoles her. The Lung enters their tent and tells Isabel that The Skin is in police custody. She says that The Bones will take them from the city and puts a gun in her jacket pocket. In her spinner, her police contact tells Ash that The Skin was Dr. Harlan Powell of the Aphrodite Beauty Salon and before that he was Richard Slattery who worked for the Tyrell Corporation and that he has been dead. Ash’s spinner flies across the night city. Ash’s Spinner is sudeenly ramme dand rival Spinner has a man with a high powered rifle. She tries to evade. Spinner vs. Spinner aerial combat, kinda cool. It does not end well. The action in Guinaldo’s visuals is vivid and cinematic. The comic book is still deep in a mystery, but the story explores more of the Blade Runner world.
Four Spinners out of Five!
#BladeRunner2019, #AshAshina, #IsobelDwlwyn, #AlexanderSelwyn
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