Happy Wednesday to everyone! With the final issue of Fear Agent sadly hitting shelves last week, I thought it would be a good idea to take a look back at where it all began with the first volume of Fear Agent entitled Re-Ignition by Rick Remender and Tony Moore and published (at least in my edition) by Image Publishing.
A series started at Image and then moved to Dark Horse, Fear Agent tells the tail of Heath Houston, a hard-drinking and hard-living Texan who is the last of the Fear Agents. In the this collection of the first four issues of the series (which was divided into different mini series that made up a larger story) we see Heath battling aliens and investigating intergalactic strangeness as a sort of soldier for hire. The story is all about sci-fi, action, adventure, and more than a little horror. Heath is a shot first and then shot some more kind of hero who is like the unholy union of Han Solo and Philo Beddoe as he sets about going from one adventure to the next. Many things in these issues are never totally explained, but as you read on in the following volumes you see how Remender has crafted a tight timeline that uses time-travel, cloning, and waring aliens in the best possible way to develop both the overall story of the universe that the events play out in, but also the character of Heath Houston; who is at first a bit of a one-trick pony. As you invest more into the character of Heath, you see how deep the emotions run and why he is the person that he is. In a lot of ways the story presented here is all set up for the bigger and better things to come.
Overall, I love Fear Agent, though the first trade here is not as strong a story as what comes after. It ends in one hell of a cliffhanger that will make you want to run out buy the next trade though, which is great. The writing by Remender is very good and only gets better as the series progresses and the art by Moore is kind of the opposite. Don't get me wrong, I love Tony Moore, but he is kind of an artistic cock-tease at times. He will produce a couple very strong issues and then have a couple weaker ones and then someone else will take over (for more examples of this see The Walking Dead, Venom, Ghost Rider, Punisher, or DMZ). His first issues are always so strong, it is just frustrating to see work from him that looks and feels rushed, which this does at times. It is a very good read and a series you should stick with till the end to get so many questions answered and have one hell of a time getting to those answers. If you like action, space, Texas, swearing, aliens, monsters, drinking, and rocket ships that look like rockets: this is the book for you.
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