CLiNT #2.1 by Mark Millar, et al.

An early relaunch for the Mark Millar-produced comic anthology magazine CLiNT, tightening up here and there. Millar handles half of the writing in this issue, contributing two new strips, with one further new one, Death Sentence, by Montynero, and a continuation of Frankie Boyle’s Rex Royd. All of the strips have that weird mix of slickness and grit that Millar typically projects – Glossy realism? Gritty romance? – it’s effective, albeit disconcerting.

They’re well written and drawn, but at this stage it’s obviously early days, and hard to know how well they’ll develop. Nonetheless, solid premises all: Millar’s Super Crooks follows a likeable, Ocean’s 11-style heist team who decide in this issue to leave superhero-laden America, to steal elsewhere; Millar’s second, Secret Service sets up a story where an Asbo teen will be trained to be James Bond; Death Sentence looks at various individuals who contract an AIDS-type virus which will kill them, but gives them superpowers first; and the confusingly non-linear Rex Royd looks at ‘Earth’s antibody’, with an introduction to help it make any sense at all. Some will develop into great stories, some won’t, but right now, enjoy the promise of this shiny new issue.