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Review: Two Step #1

Review by Francis Mao | 10/03/2003 | 14:06:40 PM PST

Warren Ellis creates a crazy cyberpunk fantasy London worth visiting.

Written by Warren Ellis
Pencilled by Amanda Conner
Inked by Jimmy Palmiotti
Colored by Paul Mounts

The Story:
The setting is London in the year 2001, but Ellis has created his own world where old London town is mixed in with equal servings of cyberpunk and fantasy elements, with a huge heaping of the absurd. We meet Rosi Blades, an internet superstar who has webcams mounted on her costume to broadcast her every move to a captive cyber-audience. She's bored out of her mind until she literally runs into a suave thief named Tony Ling who's stolen something so bizarre it has to be seen to be believed.

The Art:
I've always been a huge fan of Amanda Conner's clean, fluid art style. Her style borders on cartoony with extremely expressive bodies and faces set within dynamic, contemporary superhero comics compositions and storytelling. Her strength is in rendering a consistent-looking character from page 1 to page 22 while twisting, turning, squashing, and bending them through every which angle and perspective along the way. Ellis writes this book at a staccato rate, throwing things at the reader whether they're ready or not for it, and Conner keeps up delivering tons of visual tidbits that forces you to slow down and examine every page. Their London town is like a Sergio Aragones marginal cartoon with tons of inhabitants, each doing their own thing (often hilarious and absurd, from fornicating kitty cats in the corner, to a monkey with a giant banana?I think you're getting the picture). Palmiotti's crisp ink lines fit perfectly with Conner's pencils as does Mounts? colorful palette, adding even more energy to each chaotic scene.

The Verdict:
I applaud Wildstorm's Cliffhanger! imprint for taking risks on unique premises such as Two-Step. In a crowded market of spandex heroes, books like Two-Step may have a tough time to take hold, but it?s worth the effort. Ellis is clearly having irreverent fun with manic glee with these characters and wacky world and it shows. I'm urging readers to take all the steps needed to find this book before they disappear from the shelves.