Review – ENIAC #3

Review – ENIAC #3

Writer: Matt Kindt

Artist: Doug Braithwaite with David Lapham

Colourist: Diego Rodriguez

Letterer: Dave Sharpe

Publisher: Bad Idea

Plus: An All-New Bad Idea B-Side Story : Hero For Sale

Synopsis

Seventy-seven years ago, the United States unlocked the key to defeating the Axis powers, but, in their desperation to end the war, accidentally created a far more powerful threat: ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). Designed to be a cutting-edge breakthrough in supercomputing that could deliver a decisive victory to the Allies, ENIAC did just that…by ordering the bombing Nagasaki without human consent or approval. A fully autonomous A.I. free from the bounds of programming or morality, ENIAC spent the decades since manipulating global superpowers from the shadows, secretly shaping everything we thought we knew about the history of the geopolitical order. And, throughout it all, one classified question has plagued presidents and prime ministers, generals and spymasters alike: “What is ENIAC planning next?”

Now, after years of silence, ENIAC has re-emerged with a 72-hour countdown until it unleashes every weapon in Earth’s atomic arsenal. Its motives? Unknowable to humankind. Its endgame? Destruction on an unthinkable scale. As ENIAC’s clock rockets toward zero, it’s down to two covert operatives to infiltrate a Russian black site and free the one man alive who knows how to kill the machine…before it erases mankind, once and for all.

WRITER: MATT KINDT

Kindt flips the formula from the past few issues here and we see Fletchers mother’s back story. Blamed for allowing ENIAC to take over and blow up the Challenger shuttle she becomes obsessed with finding and stopping ENIAC. However, years take their toll and she loses her mind (we saw her eating a microchip in the last issue)

With mere hours left until ENIAC sets off every nuclear weapon on Earth can the team get low tech enough to get there in time and what mysteries lie down the hole in the desert?

The writing works well to again fill in blanks along the way, Kindt makes you confused about whether you should side with ENIAC, or destroy him. The tragic back story of Fletcher and her mother pushes us closer to the answers in the final issue.

In the second short story, a dodgy salesman is selling bits off a dead superhero from the back of his car. How did the indestructible man get there and how much can he make for each body part?

ARTWORK: DOUG BRAITHWAITE WITH DAVID LAPHAM

Braithwaite’s artwork in the main issue is great, it feels like a balance between Terminator and Inglorious Basterds. His attention to detail really shows and his art keeps popping out of the panels to create a 3D effect. The pages showing Fletcher’s life in small sections shows her character traits and how low she got before Falk saved her. The colouring by Diego Rodriguez brings Doug’s artwork alive, you can see the blood spraying from the soldier’s bifurcation. The use of nudity to show how they cope with ENIAC’s spying is neither bawdy nor exploitative and shows how far they will go to hide. The combined work has a cinematic quality in size and quality.

Overall Thoughts

This issue is a game of cat and mouse between ENIAC and humanity. The programme is always 3 steps ahead no matter what humans can do, each time ENIAC seems to only react to threats from humans so what happened 72 hours ago? I can’t wait for the final issue. A perfect score again.

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Michael Lennox

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T'was a cold dark night in East Kilbride... and below the roundabouts, something old and ancient began to shudder awake. The world would rue the day that it gave the Green Jaguar comics to read!

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