Comic Book Guy: The L-Team

It’s never a great idea to double-cross a team of crack soldiers each with their own specialist abilities, yet clandestine agencies continue to fall foul to this seemingly genius plan. 28 May will see the feature film adaptation of a graphic novel based around such a crack outfit – no, stop whistling that theme tune, this is not the A-Team: this is The Losers. Though the premise may be similar, what separates The Losers from the cigar chomping Hannibal & Co is the foul-mouthed language and comic book violence which has been synonymous with Vertigo titles for many years.

The book is the work of writer Andy Diggle (Daredevil, Thunderbolts) and illustrated by the singular monikered Jock (a pseudonym for Scottish artist Mark Simpson). The plot focuses on a rag tag bunch of Special Forces Operatives who saw the wrong thing, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. The enigmatic government agency ‘The Company’ thought they had taken care of The Losers as their chopper went down in flames with supposedly no survivors. They go down in the records as just another team lost in the black ops world of deniability. Except The Losers are not dead and, like all good pissed-off double-crossed ex-Special Forces teams, they are out for revenge.

The team may be lead by Clay, but it is motor-mouthed tech-head Jensen who steals the book with the best written persona, as he cracks wise throughout leaving the rest of the cast slightly struggling to break their moulds. Still, Diggle’s writing is set to pace akin to a time bomb, slowly ticking as the tension mounts, until inevitable high octane action becomes just a hair trigger away.

The story is both relentless and intelligent; but it is the art of Jock that truly shines in this world of harsh tones and straight edges. It is undeniably stunning with large, expansive and often singular colours awash over the pages. There is the keeping of a basic yet visceral pallet throughout, which is brought to form with the use of sharp definite shadows. The artwork is both forceful and flowing at the same time, indulging in ballistic bullet rinsing shoot outs on one page to sombre character portraits shots on another.

Though The Losers do occasionally misfire, if you are after trigger happy mayhem, they pack more than enough guns to get the job done.