Written by Peter Milligan

Illustrated by Raül Fernandez

Coloured by Giada Marchiso

Lettered by Jeff Eckleberry

Published by Boom! Studios

Will Profane is a private investigator with a good suit, sharp instincts and a hole in his memory you could drive a car through. He knows he’s working a case, he knows the last thing he was doing before the gap in his memory and he knows he has to keep going. Even if the truth will break him.

Peter Milligan is one of the best comic writers in the west and I’d encourage you to seek out anything in his back catalogue Because it’s all great. Enigma is a particularly good place to start. So is this.

Milligan has an economy of style and a lightness of touch that’s perfectly suited to this sort of sun and neon drenched noir and the story here is a delightful combination of familiar and unexpected. This is exactly the sort of noir you’d expect, full of femme fatales, sudden violence and the exhausted glamour of Los Angeles up too late past its bedtime. Will is as pragmatic as they come but he’s also a gifted, street-level magician. He scries, using cigarettes, alcohol and old detective novels to help with his cases. It’s a lovely, off-kilter touch that sets him up as something different to the norm and it delivers a couple of the book’s best beats.

This is one of those books where the entire team gets it and every choice is mindful. Fernandez’s precise art is drenched in shadow and expression and Will is an instantly likeable lead not just because of how he’s written but the personality in every line of his portrayal. The colours by Machisio help immensely too, and this feels like the sort of story Michael Mann would direct even as it takes distinctly Guillermo del Toro-esque turns, Eckleberry’s letters excel too, providing the subtlest joke in the story but also selling the multiple viewpoints and voices with style and wit.

Verdict: If it feels like I’m not telling you everything, you’re quite right. This is one of those stories you have to discover and the ending of the first issue not only explains the questions you may have but sets up even more. It’s a hell of a start to a hell of a case. Time to call in Will Profane. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart