If you’re like me, you remember the moment you picked up Nemesis by Mark Millar and thought, “Oh, he’s not writing comics anymore, he’s writing treatments for films he wants picked up. It wasn’t a good moment. That’s how I felt reading this first issue of Hardcore. It’s not bad. It’s a moderately interesting sci-fi premise that’s executed successfully. But the writing isn’t up to par with The Walking Dead or Invincible or even Battle Pope. The dialog is the cheap Hollywood tripe that Millar has been squirting on paper for the last four or five years.

If anything, this comic brought home how important Spencer’s influence is on Thief Of Thieves.

I was going to say that this book reminded me of one of Kirkman’s thrown off issues from his 2009 Pilot Season vanityfest. But it turns out this IS one of the thrown off issued from Pilot Season. I don’t remember whether or not it was my favorite. I do remember back then thinking that each book was a poor example of Kirkman’s writing. This doesn’t appear to have improved in the last three years.

From an art standpoint, the lines on the faces aren’t doing Stelfreeze any favors. I’ve never met any men with such chiseled forehead grooves. It looks like this universe’s men are all some form of Jigsaw (the Punisher villain not the marionette from Saw) while the women have all had their faces photoshopped smooth.