Heavy Liquid

Around sixty years in the future, the world has gone a bit rotten and cyber-punkish. In this corroded world, a down-on-his luck private eye known simply as S is hired to track down a reclusive artist. Meanwhile, a gang of bizarre thugs are looking for S. He’s stolen a shipment of a mysterious substance called heavy liquid. Heavy

liquid is all things to all men. To S, it’s a drug. To the gangs, it’s a weapon. Nobody knows what it really is or where it comes from, but it’s incredibly valuable.

Heavy Liquid is not your standard graphic novel. For a start, Pope’s artwork is pretty distinctive. Dark and stylised, it’s a little like Mike Mignola or Frank Miller. It’s also quite Mangaesque. But the overall image Pope creates is all his own. It’s got a very moody, urban flavour. The sense of movement and the characters’ expressions are very powerful. Above all, the setting’s believable. Although Heavy Liquid is set in the future, the city-scapes could be any low-rent slum in any city you care to mention. I could practically smell the decay. There’s nothing of great beauty or detail going on, but the art works perfectly for the story.

Heavy Liquid has elements of a classic detective story and a heavy dose of cyber-punk. The story’s quite a slow starter. But as he progresses, Pope gradually builds up the story, adding layer after layer as the pace picks up. Gang fights, unexpected clues, midnight rendezvous with the underworld’s kookier inhabitants and country-hopping all flow effortlessly into each other.

There are two things that really stood out about Heavy Liquid. Firstly, it’s gritty. For a sci-fi story, it has a lot of real-world themes. It’s showing gang-violence - there’s one scene featuring happy slapping! Through the heavy liquid, it shows drug-abuse and fighting addiction. Deep in its twisted core, it’s also about friendship and love – the melancholy, hasn’t-quite-worked out kind of love. Pope doesn’t get preachy about any of this, or glorify anything. He’s just mixing sci-fi with punchy, down-to-earth storytelling.

Secondly, the heavy liquid itself is interesting stuff. It’s far more than just a drug, and the stuff is constantly floating around on the edge of the story. Heavy Liquid is as much about the substance as the characters, and without it Heavy Liquid would be far more detective-story than sci-fi. In the end the whole plot spins on the stuff, and the result is brilliant.

I found that Heavy Liquid took a bit of getting into. It’s very different to standard superhero fare, but as I kept reading, I got dragged in. If you’re looking for a change from the DC/Marvel mainstream, this would be a good place to start.

By Michael Toper