Sisco v1 cover detail header
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Sisco v1, v2: “Shoot When You’re Told” and “Shut Her Up!”

Writer: Benec
Artist: Legrain
Colorist: Peng Wang and Studio 9
Lettering: Calix Ltd.
Translator: Joseph Laredo
Published by: Lombard/EuropeComics
Number of Pages: 49
Original Publication: 2010

Empty calories. Popcorn flick. “Sisco” is one of those. Maybe both. But it’s also too wild and too coincidental to take seriously.  Good idea, not a great execution.

Welcome to the Police State of France

Depending on the page, “Sisco” feels as much like an episode of “The Shield” as it does a comic written by Warren Ellis.

Sisco is an agent for the President of France’s protection. It’s the French equivalent of the Secret Service.  He’s not necessarily a fan of the president, but he does the job and he does it well.  The job is a bit messy though.  At the start of the first volume of the series, Sisco is sent to kill a man to protect the president’s reputation over a bad business deal.

The book relies on too many people making too many bad choices. I think that’s my problem with the book.  In the opening action scene, Sisco successfully solves the President’s problem by killing a man in cold blood and staging it to look like a suicide.  I can almost be on board with that kind of story.  These are the dirty agents of the dirty president doing dirty work, and the series is about how they get away with it — or not.  Fine, I’m in.

The windshield wiper sees Sisco kill a man for the president

But the staged suicide ends badly when Sisco turns around and sees a window wiper outside the building behind him.  OK, that’s bad enough, but the wiper also has his pre-smart phone phone out and is taking video with it.  VIDEO.  On a non-smart phone. That’s either ludicrous or a waste of time with that technology. You won’t be able to see anything anyway.

Who knows?  Either way, it struck me as funny that the window wiper had enough presence of mind to pull out his phone and start taking video (before any shots were fired), rather than run for his life.

When Sisco spots him, he runs. Sisco gives up on finding him almost immediately and returns to the office.  He doesn’t chase.  There are countless chases in the first two books of this series.  Sisco chases after lots of people.  But he gives up on this one.

Why?  To keep the plot moving.  That’s it.  It’s a classic bad plotting technique.

 

Things Build Up

Sisco doesn't have many friends inside his job, either

The fun doesn’t end there.  Sisco has other problems. For example, there’s an agent in his group who hates his guts and will do anything to have power over him and take him off the board.  That natural enmity leads to a lot of backstabbing and political power moves and sniveling evil sneering looks. But, hey, look at what they do for a living.  Being petty, manipulative, power-mad, and violent sounds like par for the course.

In any case, there’s a clean-up effort to fix the problem with the window wiper.  (I can’t be the only one who says “Vindow Viper” like that episode of G.I. Joe every time I write that, can I?)  The clean-up effort goes awry.  It’s an on-going series of misunderstandings, wrong moves, and bad intelligence that keeps screwing things up.  These are the highest echelons of protection for the president of the country and they can’t do anything right, over and over again.  With each misstep, things get more and more haywire.  They spiral out of control in a way that leaves so many potential loose ends that it feels like there’s no way they could recover from them all.  They only do because, well, there’s no room left in book two to explain it all away somehow.

I never felt like the author was in control of the second half of this book. It didn’t feel like a well thought out and tightly plotted book.  It felt like a collection of scenes with cool action bits — car chases, gun duels, train stunts, etc. — that get strung together because they all seem cool.  And, thankfully, it can seem current because there’s a hacker guy in a computer room back at headquarters who can look up all sorts of things when its convenient to the plot, but never the rest of the time.

 

OK, But Is the Art Any Good?

The art is good.  Some of the characters are a little stiff, especially in the facial expressions.  The details like the buildings in the backgrounds and all the cars are well drawn.

Sisco car chase panel

The storytelling is a bit of an issue.  It feels like Legrain is using some American comic book storytelling techniques in the ways he stacks panels in certain parts.  Things go from left to right to top-to-bottom-then-right-and-down-or-across. It’s never a problem, per se, but it feels unnecessary.

Worse, though, there’s a car chase in the first book that’s just confusing.  I don’t even know who was in which car, and which other cars are the innocent bystanders in the chase.  There are too many close angles on the action.

When a book is constructed as a series of action set pieces, you better at least get the storytelling clear for those parts, and this book doesn’t always succeed at even that.

The Lettering

I’ve ragged on this book enough.

No, wait, the lettering is atrocious.

Bad lettering example from Sisco v1

It’s the best example I could ever give you for why ALL-CAPS lettering is a good idea and mixed case has major issues.  The funny thing is, they’re using all caps in this book, but they’re doing it horribly.

It’s all caps, but the first letter in the sentences is always twice as tall.  They’re approximating a capital letter by making the capital version of the character taller than the rest.  This leaves all sorts of ugly white space around the words in the balloons, and it throws off the visuals in balloons where more than one line of text is stacked.

Bad lettering example from Sisco v1

In what also has to be a first for any book I’ve reviewed, there’s a reverse-crossbar-I issue here.  They NEVER use the crossbar version, even when the first person singular pronoun starts a sentence while you’re using an ALL-CAPs font that has a different character for the first letter in every sentence.  It’s baffling.

 

Volumes 3 and 4

The next story is spread across volumes 3 and 4.  It’s better, but still suffers from “bodyguard falls asleep at convenient time” problems, along with a touch of “why hide that guy’s face when it’s painfully obvious to a four year old who that is?”   In that story, Sisco is acting as a bodyguard for the president’s daughter.

There’s a bit of confusion in the story done on purpose, but the whole thing felt slightly off somehow.

The series is up to its tenth volume  in France now, so it must sell well enough.  I just can’t recommend it.

 

On the Bright Side

These are very fast reads.

That’s why I read all the way out to the fourth book to see if I would change my mind.  It didn’t take as much time as you would think for 50 page books.

Recommended?

Sisco v1 cover Sisco v2 cover

Nah.  Try “Largo Winch” instead.  Or “Ken Games.”

— 2018.034 —

 

Buy It Now

Volume 1:

Buy this book on Amazon Click here to buy digital BD comics albums through Izneo.com  Buy this book on Comixology

Volume 2:

Buy this book on Amazon Click here to buy digital BD comics albums through Izneo.com  Buy this book on Comixology

Izneo.com Preview

 


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2 Comments

    1. The art is probably the best part of the book. Some of the storytelling is questionable, but there’s some solid art in there. If it’s just a bunch of people in a room talking, it’s good looking stuff. That sounds like a slight, but it’s tough for many artists to do. They just get bored. Legrain makes it interesting.