Joy Operations vol. 1

Joy Corrigan is an EN.VOI.  That means she’s the top enforcer to the leader of a Trust, the giant city-states that make up the world of the future.  Kathryn Menteuse leads the Jonado Trust and the bond between her and her EN.VOI is strong.  Until one day when Joy becomes compromised.  Now everyone she thought was on her side is against her, and her family is at risk as well.  Worse yet is that the only individual she can rely on in this situation is the one who compromised her in the first place.

In case you were starting to wonder whether or not Bendis’ publishing deal with Dark Horse would extend to republishing his old stuff (“Fortune & Glory,” “Jinx”), or continuations of previously-established series (“Pearl,” “The United States of Murder, Inc.”), here comes a brand-new miniseries with artist Stephen Byrne.  It’s flashy, slickly executed, and has a lot of the quality dialogue that I keep coming back for from the writer.  Better still is that it also has one great twist at the beginning of the story that I didn’t see coming.  It was enough to get me really excited for what the rest of the volume had to offer.

That is, until I realized that Bendis wasn’t going to do anything I hadn’t seen before after offering up this one twist.  It heads in a perfectly acceptable direction, though I was hoping the story would dwell longer on how it’s essentially a violation of Joy’s mind.  The narrative, however, is more concerned with offering up visceral thrills, however, to the point where it breezes through the setup regarding its antagonist in a clear violation of the “show, don’t tell” rule.  Byrne’s art does serve up a vibrant future and some really slick action scenes, but the end result doesn’t feel substantial enough to warrant the $25 cover price this volume is asking us for.