Comic Review: Overwatch: Tracer — London Calling #1 (Dark Horse Comics)

In a new five-issue miniseries based on the Overwatch game, Dark Horse is releasing a print version of Overwatch: Tracer-London Calling.

Issue one shows us Tracer, a young soldier, five years after her tour as an Overwatch agent has ended. She’s ‘underemployed’, now chasing purse-snatchers and petty thieves. Not too glamourous, perhaps, but Tracer is upbeat. It’s helping people, so ‘no biggie’.

But things quickly get more complicated when Tracer stumbles upon a hidden part of London, where the omnics are living in hiding. It’s not pretty, and despite her best efforts, Tracer is provoking controversy just by association with these outcasts!

As a new reader to this title, you and/or I have some homework to do. But writer Mariko Tamaki gives us the broad strokes of intro into Tracer’s world. Her fascination with music, the subcultures, the relationships. It can come across as a bit shallow and ‘pollyanna’ I suppose, but perhaps that’s part of the charm of this swiftly moving story. And it ain’t all lollipops and rainbows.

Artist Babs Tarr, after dynamic and dramatic layouts by Hunter Clark and drawing assists by Heather Danforth, brings the bigger-than-life panels, thick lines, and explosive emotional gestures and expressions. It’s posing, fighting, and reposing, all well handled. The colour by Rachael Cohen is big on burgundy and blue, with yellow complements. Lettering by Deron Bennett is solid and stable.

It’s a fast-moving storyline, fraught with heartstrings being pulled. Appealing for those who like a sense of humanity and sanity in their British sci-fi adventures.

Dark Horse, Overwatch: Tracer-London Calling #1, $3.99 for 27 pages of content