- Chrome Roses, book 1
- Created, written, & illustrated by
Welcome to The Tract, a future city built on the ashes of a world destroyed by a pandemic viral catastrophe. Chrome Roses mixes cyberpunk, noir, and murder mystery into an atmospheric masterpiece simply described as “Blade Runner meets Hellboy”.
“EAT MOLTEN DEATH!”
Inside Book One, witness the most epic, eye-popping widescreen action ever devised. Meet Kramm, a low trending freelance detective living by his wits in a city where the laws change constantly, driven by social media. He’s tracing Teo, a crazy vigilante fighting for freedom with her group of sexually liberated ultraviolent rebels. As Kramm and Teo discover a murderous conspiracy every streetpunk, mecha, and trackerborg in The Tract is hired to stop them. Can they solve the mystery at the heart of the city… or die trying?
Ho, Chummers! Today we’re taking a trip back to 1982 when a group of young hooligans told their parents they were going to the theater to see Tron (again), when in fact they were planning to see the new movie starring Han Solo… er, Harison Ford. What those lads experienced was nothing at all like Star Wars, but there was definitely something about the movie that dug its way into the brain of at least one of the underaged movie goers.
I dunno if you’d picked up on it yet, but I was that little theater-jumping ne’er-do-well, and the original version of Blade Runner forever holds a place in my heart.
Current day, the ghost of Phillip K. Dick’s uploaded consciousness lives on in a growing selection of stories, movies, and comics. Case in point, Chrome Roses from creator/writer/artist Monty Nero introduces a whole new world of cybernetic runners facing life in the Tract head on. In Book One, we meet Kramm, a freelance law enforcement operative trying to get by as best he can in a world run on likes & clicks. Nero does a fantastic job of bringing out the memory of Harrison Ford’s gruff narration from Blade Runner’s original release, but dials Kramm down to more relatable levels. There’s a bit less dogged determination and a little more wrong place, right time.
I have to say that where Chrome Roses truly shines is in the artwork. There are some spreads that are just gorgeous to behold, and amazingly, the art is handled by Monty “Just Another Thing I Do” Nero. No less than three times while reading this comic, I turned a page and had to stop and stare for a few minutes. The detailed cityscapes, the way Nero uses perspective in his set pieces, and the choice to keep the comic mostly black & white… I don’t know if I’ve ever used the word “boggled” in a sentence and meant it as much as I do here.
Monty Nero is knocking it out of the park with this latest piece of work, doing for cyberpunk what he did for superheroes in Death Sentence. Chrome Roses #1 goes from 0 to… really fast within the first few pages, lays out some heavy groundwork to get the reader in, and finishes on a gut punch. And then there’s the bonus story, posing to the reader “what would you give up in order to forget…?”
Get in on this one while you can.
Final Score: 12/13
