Scrapper isn’t what I thought it’d be. When I heard in passing that Cliff Bleszinski, who co-created Gears of War and Bulletstorm, had co-written a comic book, I assumed it’d be about his favorite topic: angry space marines built like refrigerators. Instead, Scrapper is All Dogs Go to Heaven with a body count. It’s a slightly dystopian science fiction story about a talking dog in a domed city, as well as a celebration of all the dogs Bleszinski has known.
Scrapper is also a six-issue monthly miniseries published through Image Comics, co-written by criminally underrated indie creator Alex de Campi and Bleszinski, with art and covers by Sandy Jarrell.
Scrapper is a dog who’s taken it upon himself to protect the people of the domed city of New Verona. By day, he keeps an Italian restaurant free from rats; by night, he patrols the city’s streets with his buddy Tank, knocking down muggers and finding lost children. Scrapper can talk and is unusually strong but has no idea why.
While Scrapper has been dealing with petty crime, the forces of gentrification have slowly been closing in on his neighborhood, and by the end of issue #1, Scrapper’s headed into direct conflict with them.
It’s your basic talking cyberdog vs. corporate real-estate robots sort of story — you know, that old chestnut — which Jarrell’s art gives a cheerful Don Bluth vibe. New Verona is somewhere between a cyberpunk sprawl and the rundown New York of an ‘80s movie, with Scrapper as the neighborhood hero who’ll try and turn this thing around.
The early action sequences are a particular highlight. I’m a sucker for these sorts of big Silver Age sequences, where the artist tracks a character’s acrobatics through a series of complex movements in a single panel, and there’s a great one here. It’s hard to believe Scrapper’s been able to keep himself a secret from the humans of New Verona — you’d think somebody would’ve talked about that time a dog barked at him hard enough to take out his windshield — but it’s a well-executed, deft piece of fight-scene-as-storytelling.
Most of the problems I have with issue #1 can readily be attributed to the comic being somebody’s first work in the medium. A lot of its exposition is clunky, particularly Scrapper’s conversations with Tank about Scrapper’s conspicuously mysterious origins. It’s the sort of thing that comes off as the character talking directly to the reader, which is less foreshadowing and more a sneak preview.
There’s also a big tone shift in the first issue, where it goes from funny talking rats to manga ultra-violence in the space of roughly two pages. I might’ve liked to have spent more time in New Verona, with its street crime, dumb thugs, and goofy pigeons, before the story went completely loud.
Even so, there’s a lot here to keep your interest. Bleszinski was smart to work with de Campi here, as her skill with the medium keeps Scrapper humming along, and there’s a lot packed into the first issue’s 24 pages. There are some awkward bits, but this is a perfectly decent start to an action story.
Scrapper #1 is scheduled for physical and digital release today, July 19. It’s planned to run monthly up until its conclusion in December.
A review copy of Scrapper #1 was provided by the publisher.
