Comic Review: Hardcore #2

Hardcore #2

Image Comics/Skybound

Writer: Andy Diggle

Artist: Alessandro Vitti

Issue #2 of Hardcore offers an adequate action story but it doesn’t bode well for the series as a whole. Government agent Drake is the sole survivor of the Hardcore program, after one of its ex-members betrayed them. However, he was on mission when the attack occurred. So Drake’s mind is trapped in the body of a colonel thousands of miles away from his physical location. Hardcore #1 introduced a high-tech body-jacking premise that had a lot of potential. Unfortunately, it was also quick to limit it. Issue #2 reduces it to an admittedly interesting way to introduce a race against time element. This does mean that Hardcore has failed to do much with its potential.

To both its detriment and advantage, Hardcore #2 reads exactly like an action movie. The fights, adversaries, and locales perfectly capture the feeling of that genre. Alessandro Vitti’s art does well in this regard and this issue gives him more of a chance to show that. However it inherits a lot of common action movie problems in the process and there’s even less characterization than the previous issue. The dialogue is little better, as so much of it is purely expositional. Outside of a few absurd moments and weak gags, Hardcore lacks the sense of humor that can humanize an otherwise shallow narrative like this. This wouldn’t be a problem if the series had more it could fall back on.

Hardcore #2 does make an effort to broaden its focus by hinting that Markus’ plan has more targets than just the government program that discharged him. Unfortunately it adds a little too much to the “action movie” atmosphere and not for the better. Even while establishing this, the book takes too vague of an approach. Hardcore is in an awkward middle ground where not enough has been revealed to retain interest but at the same time there isn’t a strong enough mystery to compensate. It indicates a deeper problem with these sort of comics. It’s all fine and well to imitate the style of action movies but that puts the book in a dangerous position. If it can’t offer something a movie can’t then why not just watch a movie? As I previously mentioned, Hardcore does suspiciously read like a movie pitch. Even then, it still has four issues left to move past that.