Reviewed by Lorenzo Princi
2014-07-04
Carl Seltz has a wife, 2 kids, 3 mortgages and an uneventful job as a tax collector, or so he believes. His simple life is infact a facade, programmed by his creators at Willeford Home Appliances. He's in fact a robot killing machine on a mission to assassinate their corporate competition. The war raging within his circuitry between ignorant bliss and the search for truth ensures things boil over, leaving a trail of carnage in his wake as the illusion (and his false skin) is shed.Hard Boiled reads like a Philip K. Dick or Richard Matheson short where a science fiction dystopia sets the scene for a horrifying cycle of hopeless revolution. The hyper-real violence is set in a place best compared to Mega-City One from 2000 AD's Judge Dredd. Vast, overcrowded and full of malfunctioning, de-humanising technology.The artwork outclasses the story in many ways, with full page intricate spreads of the outrageous landscapes and highly detailed emotive expression. This isn't Frank Miller's best work, but a quick, fun and thoughtful short for fans of Science Fiction.
Discussion