Choker

It’s about a bitter (ex-)cop.  It’s set in a town that is beyond gritty and squalid.  It features art from Ben Templesmith.  Take all of these together and one might think that “Choker” is the second coming of Warren Ellis and Templesmith’s great “Fell” series from a few years back.  We only got eight issues of it (enough for a collection) but the word is that more will be coming, as soon as Ellis writes enough scripts and Templesmith can clear his schedule.  However, “Choker” isn’t content to pay homage to that series as the world it takes place in features things like the “Vacu-Corpse 3000” which sucks up human remains from the sidewalk, drugs that can turn people into vampires, and a left hand with a homicidal mind of its own.  So now we’re into “Transmetropolitan” territory as well.  No points for guessing whether or not it manages to do either influence any justice.

Johnny Jackson is the ex-cop in question who, as is the way these things go, is presented with a chance to get his old job back.  Turns out that Hunt Cassidy, a scum-of-the-earth drug dealer he busted several years ago, has found his way back onto the streets with a new trick.  I mentioned a drug that can turn people into vampries — that’s Cassidy’s gig now.  Teamed up with a new female partner named Walker, who keeps her ex-husband’s scrotum attached to her rearview mirror, Jackson now finds himself the point man for the dubious well-being of Shotgun City.

Few people do dark, gritty, and flat-out creepy as well as Templesmith and he’s in fine form here.  Writer Ben McCool’s script gives him lots of chances to show what he’s capable of and we’re treated to scenes of roaming cannibals prepared to devour the elderly, a hand’s slow, methodical plan to cap its owner, Walker fending off a vampire attack singlehandedly from a speeding car, and the very “chunky” final conflict between Jackson, Cassidy and a good portion of the police force.  If you like dark and twisted art, this book won’t disappoint.  It also helps that Templesmith is a good caricaturist when it comes to his characters as well, as the stylistic exaggerations they possess fit right in with the material itself.

Unfortunately, there’s not enough substance to back up the artistic style here.  McCool’s writing owes a deep stylistic debt to Ellis, most specifically in the ultraviolence and “stylized witty banter” departments.  The writer apes them well enough, but when the original is as prolific as he is the imitation performed here feels quite underwhelming.  As for the story, there’s not a whole lot to write home about there.  Jackson’s quest to get his job back and put Cassidy away for good isn’t an entirely straightforward one, but it might just as well have been one given that the twists and turns it takes don’t show us anything we haven’t seen before.

Not helping matters any is that the world itself feels vague and undefined.  For a good portion of it, I was under the impression that the story was taking place in some warped version of the present day.  McCool doesn’t do a lot to establish that this is taking place in the (near) future beyond some tossed-off window dressing — like the Vacu Corpse 3000.  You almost wish he had gone farther and given us more crazy ideas and devices to establish the timeframe and energize the story.  Based on what we got here, I’m guessing the lack of such here comes down to a failure of imagination.

This wasn’t a bad pastiche of Ellis, but you’d be better off reading “Fell” or (if you haven’t gotten around to it yet) “Transmetropolitan” to see “Choker’s” influences distilled into their purest forms.  That said, though this collection is billed as “volume one” what I’ve read here doesn’t fill me with confidence that a second volume will be any better assuming it arrives at all.