Cyclops vol. 1

It’s not an “X-Men” spinoff but a new project from Matz and Luc Jacamon, writer and artist respectively of “The Killer.”  It’s the year 2054 and the U.N. has finally decided to farm out peacekeeping operations to private security companies such as Multicorps Security, Inc.  This isn’t an original idea but the twist they’ve given it is that in order to subsidize operating costs, these firms are allowed to sell footage from the operations to the public.  Said footage is recorded by the cameras in their soldiers’ helmets, which gives them the “cyclops” nickname.  It turns war into a kind of spectator sport and it’s into this world that Doug Pistoia finds himself in when he responds to a recruitment ad from Multicorps.

Pistoia initially comes off as too suave and charismatic to be likeable.  Think of the popular kid who stole your girl in high school.  Or if you didn’t have a girlfriend, it was because they were all paying attention to him.  Fortunately Matz realizes this and works this into the story as Multicorps makes him the public face of their operations and also has the man undertaking a particularly dubious operation in order to keep him under their thumb.  It’s this bit that will be the driving point of future installments as Pistoia hooks up with a journalist critical of his company in order to find out what their ultimate plan is.  While the story doesn’t have the compelling moral ambiguity of their signature work, it’s still an interesting bit of speculative fiction and Jacamon’s art does a great job of bringing the near-future to life.