AWOL'd Vol 1: Rogues

by Jason Loo

This is the last of the purchases that I made at TCAF that I hadn't read yet, not because I wasn't interested in reading it right away, but mostly because it was my last purchase of that day...

I remember picking this book up a couple of times during the show, and finally returning to buy it. I couldn't really make up my mind as to whether or not it caught my interest, and I still sort of feel that way about it.

I like the central concept - that some shadowy government agency has been abducting runaway kids, and modifying and training them to serve as completely deniable special forces agents. In this first volume, one group of kids get away, and the rest of the book focuses on their being on the run, and on the particularly nasty government guy that wants to find them.

It's a good set-up and premise. I think my problem with the book came when the kids, on the lam, hook up with some guy who wants to use them to help a government-sponsored motorcycle gang put an end to gang violence in Philadelphia. At that point, it just got to be a little too much.

The art in the book is perfectly fine, but I found the ziptones used for the grays to be distracting. Each chapter started with a pin-up that was properly toned, but the rest of the book is just too, I don't know, dotted.

Loo is a young artist, just starting out. I see a lot of potential in his work, and would be interested in seeing where he goes from here.

Note: This is not the cover to the comic that I bought, but I don't have a scanner, and this is what I kept finding on the internet when I searched for this title.