I'm not sure where I picked up a mostly signed copy of 'Project Jameson' but it's on my shelf, so it's time I read it. It's a collection of the first six issues of 'Brodie's Law', which tells almost half a story, but does get to a logical stopping point. It means that we're not unhappy about where it ends but it's crystal clear that the story isn't done and there's more to come. While Jack Brodie was created by Daley Osiyemi and David Bircham, who co-wrote the story—Bircham also provided the art—they brought in the legendary Alan Grant of 2000 AD fame to polish it and be credited as the writer. The later four issues are credited to Osiyemi and Bircham and are collected in 'Road to Redemption'.

I should underline that this is the beginning of Brodie's story, even though it doesn't seem like it. I got the distinct feeling during the early pages that this was an existing character who was showing up in a new story, because there's no origin story. We have to gradually figure out that Brodie is an anti-hero, working in the criminal underworld of London to take down the worst of the worst. Why, we're never quite sure and we're given little information on what he's done and who he's done any of it to. He shows up here as a fully-formed character, already in deep.

And he's about to get in deeper because, right before we begin, he steals a computer disc from an ambitious scientific company, P-Fact. He doesn't do this off his own bat, I should add; he's hired, by a billionaire called Eugene Della Cruz for reasons unknown. This prompts a lot of people to search for him. What he does do off his bat, immediately thereafter, is steal his ex-wife back from a crime lord called Odessa who's hooked her on coke. "Everybody's pushin' somethin'," he points out to us. "Tonight, I'm pushin' back." And he does. He gets Marla too, which prompts pretty much everyone not already searching for him to join the hunt.

Just to make life even harder for Brodie, Marla's promptly murdered, in the hotel room that he's sequestered her in with their son, Damien, and the boy is taken too. If all this might suggest that Brodie must be in a heck of a state, I should point out that Bircham's art is visceral and emotional. In moments of clarity and stillness, he adds detail, but whenever things go seriously pear-shaped, which is most of the time, he ditches the detail and goes for broad impressionist strokes, with lots of motion. And, when motion ends, threat begins. It's an effective approach that sometimes looks simplistic but makes a heck of a lot of sense.

So does his use of colour which is incredibly subdued, as if we're at a fascinating midpoint between a black and white film noir and a colour neo-noir. The colours don't aim to paint reality but to hint towards it, almost like the way that silent movies often used tinting to set mood, colour as a form of unspoken meaning that we inherently understand because we're human beings and we share a common grasp of what colours say when they're not being colours.

Where things get really interesting, and where this shifts from crime to science fiction and then to very gritty superhero in genre, is when Brodie decides to figure out what's prompted all this chaos and kidnaps a beautiful scientist to answer his questions. She's Tomokai Yoshida, who used to work for P-Fact so ought to be able to figure out what's on the disc. Of course, it turns out to be the Project Jameson of the title, data about a compound that stimulates the ability to morph, which is supposedly a latent ability of the human body that it taps into. So, once they make a deal, Tomokai orders the equipment she needs and synthesises the compound and injects Brodie with it.

Now we have our superhero. Well, kinda sorta. He's not the sort of superhero who puts on spandex and fights for truth, justice and the American way. He simply gains an ability that could be seen as much as a curse as a boon. Through touching someone and transferring some of their DNA into his own body, he can become them, not through simple mimicry like, say, Mystique (of X-Men lore), but by temporarily absorbing their entire self, including knowledge, memory and even soul, more like Rogue (ditto). Literally he becomes someone else while keeping a vague form of control as himself. It's the ultimate form of disguise. In the meantime, this someone else becomes an empty shell doing nothing but waiting to be restored when Brodie transfers their soul back.

This crucial background takes three issues to unfold, which is about half the book, so I'm not going any further here, except to say that this ability proves to be an effective way to move into Yojimbo territory and set crime lords against crime lords, while attempting to retrieve his son. I should also point out that it's really not that simple and throwing out superhero comparisons is unfortunate, because this is seriously dark in tone and I did mention that this ability is a curse as much as it ever serves as a blessing.

Imagine becoming someone else and gaining everything that makes them them for a short period of time? Sounds interesting, huh? Where's the sign-up form, right? Well, what about if you become the assassin who murdered your ex-wife and framed you for the crime, and you remember through them everything about committing that act? That's pretty brutal. It's useful, sure, if you're trying to bring people to vigilante justice but it's also seriously traumatic. What if you're a straight man and you become a woman, only to realise, while undercover, that you're attracted to another man because your nipples get hard and you feel dampness between your legs? How do you react to the feeling? How do you control it? What if the target of your sudden affection is someone you loathe?

And, crucially, what if not all of this returns to the original bodies when you initiate transfer back? The worst part of the curse is that each person that Brodie becomes leaves a little of themself for him to have to learn to live with. The longer this runs, the harder it becomes to keep going and the harder it becomes for him to maintain his own sense of self amidst everyone else's memories. How much of this can one man manage and remain functional? Maybe we'll find out the answer to that question in 'Road to Redemption'. We don't here, though it certainly deepens Brodie's character.

I liked this a lot but it didn't feel like I'd read a graphic novel. Rather appropriately, it felt like I was experiencing someone else's experience from the comfort of my chair. I didn't feel like I was in any sort of danger, but this book kind of happened to me in a wild impressionistic fashion, almost as if I had just taken on Jack Brodie's memories. It was quite the trip. ~~ Hal C F Astell