Hedge Fund v3: “Chaos Strategy”

Back to the wall, it’s time to fight.

Welcome to the world of economic engineering and gamesmanship. Let’s destabilize the entire economy to teach people a valuable lesson!

Something like that.

If you though “Largo Winch” went deep on systems and standards, you ain’t read nothin’ yet!

Credits in Global Chaos

What’s Going On?

It was, without a doubt, one of the most clumsily seeded plot points in any BD I’ve ever read. In the first volume, Frank and Kate have a tumble in bed. It lasts for only a page, but this line of dialogue makes the story point blatantly obvious:

“Just be careful,” she says in the next panel, and off they go.

Obviously, he was about to be Not Careful Enough, or this bit of dialogue never would have happened.

When Kate shows up with a baby in the second volume, it’s not at all shocking, though it’s supposed to be.

We all know Chekhov’s Law by now.

In volume 3, Kate brings her son, Noah, to meet his father, Frank, who happens to be serving a very long sentence in a maximum security prison.

She believes her son needs a father figure. She’s going to take on his legal case to get Frank out of jail, so he can somehow co-parent, I guess?

Honestly, the logic and reasoning is a little murky in this section, but let it go. It kicks off the whole point of this volume: Get Frank out of jail and take down Bilkaer along the way.

Welcome to “Hedge Fund: A Revenge Tail.”

Don’t worry. This isn’t Rambo. There’s no explosions or gun play or any of that. (OK, there’s a little gun play, but it’s not an action scene.) This is a war of economics on a level that rises to super villainy pretty quickly.

It might be a little over the top, but the logic is easy enough to follow, and easy enough to be scared by. It’s something you’ve likely never thought about, so it’s a new kind of evil villain plot that keeps things interesting.

Economics Lessons Contained Herein

This book gets deep into macro-economics and the delicate balance of power between banks and the nations they do business with. If you ever wanted to know more about why Greece had the troubles it did after 2008, this book is going to explain some of it to you, and then use it as the kick start a whole chain of events.

This volume had to take place in the time it did. The moves rely on the economic instability in all of Europe in the early 2010s. The pieces were perfectly in place for the moves this book suggests.

The third act, in particular, is all about power moves on a global economic scale. We’re used to seeing third act punch/kick/splode kinds of endings. With “Hedge Fund,” it’s a race to prevent global economic instability with political and court-ordered power moves.

If this kind of thing fascinates you — like which banking systems control money to European countries — then this is the book for you. If it’s not, you probably will roll your eyes and not be able to follow it.

Everything that’s happening is explained, but it’s easy to get bogged down in it a bit.

Everything Comes Together

This is the clear finale of the story arc, including bringing back many characters you may have even forgotten about from the first volume.

Things are moving on all fronts. There are legal moves being made by Kate on multiple levels as she tries to find a loophole somewhere to save her new client. Frank winds up making some economic moves from prison to keep himself safe, but makes a mistake or two along the way. Those mistakes can be painful when you’re in the prison’s general population, as you might imagine.

Meanwhile, Bilkaer is plotting diabolical things that, like any true supervillain, he’s all too happy to explain to anyone who’s curious. The moves and mastery he showed off in the first two books are mere warm-ups to what he tries to pull off in book three. It’s exciting to see the scope expand so quickly and to such a huge degree. But there’s also a part of me that knows I’m buying the premise for the sake of enjoying the story. I could feel the willing suspension of disbelief starting to power on as I read.

The End

I can’t say too much more without invoking spoiler warnings, so I won’t. I found the book to be a satisfactory conclusion to the story so far. It has to thread a needle of punishing the guilty while letting the slightly-less-guilty achieve some level of redemption, with maybe a smidge of hope.

Roulot and Sabbah does a good job in paying off the pieces they’d laid into place in the first two books, while also including a surprise or two.

Henaff keeps his quality of art up through to the end. He doesn’t stumble and fall on the way to the finish line. He’s very consistent through three volumes, including another amazing double page splash to start the book. This time, we see Moscow from above.

Henaff has a variety of settings to draw in this book (prisons, park, posh restaurants, etc.), and it looks like that helps to energize him. It’s not just boardrooms and offices. Thankfully, he pulls them all off well.

The colors in the book keep his art in the forefront. The colors aren’t fighting for your attention. They help convey the story, which is huge to me. I’m getting tired of upscale coloring jobs that muddy up the art. I want to see the artist’s work, first and foremost, and “Hedge Fund” keeps that point of view throughout the series.

Not The End

This would be the end of the series’ first cycle. There are a couple of huge openings for future storylines, but Roulot and Sabbah took particular care to wrap up all the major storylines of these books here.

If anything, they almost wrap them up too neatly. It all makes sense and everything has a logical flow in the narrative, but at the same rate it feels a little bit like all the players cleared off the board a little too quick and easily at the end.

As I write this, volume 4 is scheduled to be published in English at the end of October. Volume 6 just came out in French. So we will get another full cycle. I’ve purposefully not looked at their descriptions to keep some element of surprise.

It’s not a perfect series, but I’m enjoying it enough to continue, and I’m happy to see it is.

Recommended?

It’s a fun roller coaster ride of a series, though it’s not the first thing I’d think to recommend to someone new to BD. The reliance on economics explanations might turn some people off.

That angle is also its biggest draw. There’s nothing else like this book on the market, so it caters to its niche well. I found it particularly interesting to explore international economics and politics in this manner.

I enjoyed this first cycle of stories, and think this third book does a nice job in raising the stakes and giving us a satisfying pay-off. But I will be the first to admit it’s not an award-winning kind of comic.

— 2019.045 —

Buy It Now

Bonus Panel

The Podcast Version

On The Pipeline Comics Podcast, I reviewed the first three books in the series. You should subscribe to the podcast, of course, but you can also listen to just that episode here: