Hotwire – Deep Cut #1

Ladies and Gentlemen, she’s back! The bitchiest, palest and – quite frankly – most awesome exorcist in comics these days. Yes, I’m talking about Detective Exorcist Alice Hotwire, in case you hadn’t guessed from the cover to the left. In case you don’t know who Alice Hotwire is, you must catch up on the Hotwire books. There will be a short recap after the jump, but I won’t give away the story of the first mini. So go read it yourself. Meanwhile, we’ll dig into the first issue of the second series starring Alice Hotwire: “Hotwire – Deep Cut #1”!

Before we get going, let’s take a trip back in time to the distant past of 2009. A young publisher named Radical Publishing published a comic book named “Hotwire – Requiem for the Dead”. Artist/writer extraordinaire Steve Pugh must have sat together with Warren Ellis and came up with Alice Hotwire. Steve Pugh, however, both wrote and illustrated the book and it was good. The basic premise is this: The wireless electronic things we living people constantly use – wireless headsets, mobile phones, Bluetooth everything and so on – prevent the spirits of the dead from leaving this world. There are suppressor towers shielding the nice neighbourhoods from the invasion of the “Blue Lights” as the ghosts are called. They’re not ghosts, though. Sometimes, they’re just floating around, other times they manage to tell their stories and sometimes, they become violent. That’s when the Metro Police calls in their Exorcists. That’s where Alice Hotwire comes in. Highly intelligent and having been intensively schooled on the matter of Blue Lights by her parents who were pretty damn weird people in their own rights, she’s probably everyone’s least favourite police officer. She’s also a queen bitch.

After the events of the last miniseries, Alice is not too well. She’s locked herself up in her apartment and spends her time playing videogames as part of her rehab. Seriously, her video games have been prescribed by a doctor. Also, she lives together with her ex boyfriend who is dead. He was killed by a Blue Light after he tried to kill Alice by throwing her onto a busy street. Luckily, she kind of liked it since she was on intelligence-suppressing drugs at the time and in her own words “barely sentient”. And that’s what makes her so awesome, really. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that Alice Hotwire is the best, strongest woman in comics today. Forget all the silly tropes in the other books, because Alice would have them all, but doesn’t. Sure, she’s weird and nobody likes her, but it’s not like she is actually out to be liked. Her confidence does not stem from her unconventional upbringing or the deep trauma that was left by her taking a lot of drugs or from being thrown off a bridge. She’s done all these things, yes, but she’s not defined by them. That’s what makes her so interesting. She’s not doing her job because she had bad experiences with Blue Lights, she hasn’t been – as the trope goes – “empowered by rape”, no, she does her job because she’s uniquely qualified and because she can.

In fact, she so much better at her job than everyone else, that they create traffic accidents in a world where there are absolutely no traffic accidents anymore. This utter incompetence – which doesn’t come across as goofy but rather as “They didn’t know what they were doing” – makes Alice return from her self-imposed exile in her flat. This is pretty good because there’s a new kind of Blue Light around. This one is presumably made of metal. Or animated metal. In any case, it means big trouble for everyone.

That’s the story, basically. This issue is more of a new intro into the world of Hotwire, plus some background on the titular character who has been revealed to originally have been a redhead. And it’s nice. The story flows, fits and is just a treat to read. As soon as the book is over, you crave more and it’s over way too quickly, despite there being a whopping 26 pages of comic. Okay, the book does cost $3.50, but you’re getting your money’s worth. Because there’s not only the nice story with the strong lead character, there’s also the art.

Steve Pugh is awesome. His art is fantastic. He uses colours everywhere, yet the city maintains its dark and gloomy atmosphere. And then there’s Hotwire herself… and basically all the other characters, too. They look like real people, the art being almost photorealistic. And while that is very difficult to pull off, Pugh manages it really well. The characters look like themselves in every single panel and their emotions perfectly match the writing. What I consider quite an achievement is the difference between Alice on dumb-drugs and off them. She actually looks like an imbecile on that bridge and like a highly intelligent person in the current time. And even the Blue Lights appear to have feelings. How Pugh does that… no idea, but you can tell that they too have feelings, even if they have absolutely nothing human on them. However, Steve Pugh doesn’t just pay attention to the characters, but also the world. He takes today’s world – England presumably – and one-ups it in every way. He even pays attention to details like Hotwire’s motorcycle helmet or the uniform of the incompetent cops. For some reason, it says Bear Claw on them. Why? Nobody knows. Well, I imagine that Steve Pugh does, but we don’t.

Final verdict: Go get it. Go read it. You’ll love it, regardless of what you like and what you usually read. While I’d say this is a must-read for any kind of comic book fan, it certainly is a must-read if you like strong, female leads or strong leads in general. If you’re into weird science, then go get it, too.