Clone #1

Written by David Schulner
Art by Juan Jose Ryp

And the Image hits just keep coming.  Clone is a new series (a mini-series, I assume, but it's always hard to tell with Image) that touches on familiar story elements, but does it very effectively.

Luke Taylor's wife is about to have his baby.  He's still bitter about the fact that his own father abandoned him, which heightens the usual concerns new father's have about being ready for things.  One morning, as he is getting ready for work, he finds a man who looks just like him quietly bleeding out on his kitchen floor.  This guy warns him that someone is after his wife.

This someone, who looks just like Luke and the guy in the kitchen, shows up at the hospital where the wife is getting a check-up, and takes off with her.

We figure out a little while before Luke does that we are dealing with a cloning story (admittedly, the title kind of tipped that off), and that 'they' are after Luke for reasons we don't know.  There are some people ready to help him, and I'm sure we will get the back story in the next issue or so.

This is an effective opening, and the book falls into that 'movie good' category quite nicely.  Juan Jose Ryp's art is dynamic and detailed in equal measures (although I still hate the weird effect he draws around any spot where a character hits something), and it helps propel the story along.  The clone story has not reached the ubiquity of the zombie or vampire story yet, but with books like Garrison and Dancer touching on similar themes not that long ago, it does seem like there's something going on.

Still, newcomer David Schulner has crafted a nice introduction here, and I'm curious to see where he takes it.