Throwaways #6

By Caitlin Kittredge, Steve Sanders, Steve Wands, and Clark Holliday

Throwaways #6 from Image is a comic that takes a familiar concept – secret government agency messing with people’s minds and giving them super powers – and brings it to life in a whole new way. Art brings to life the story from Kittredge of two human experiments from ULTRA who are trying to fight for their lives as mysterious people hunt them down. Abby finds herself in a precarious situation where she faces certain harm at every turn as she tries to find Dr. Ostrander. Meanwhile, Dean Logan is attempting to flee his family house with his girlfriend, in the hopes of eventually meeting up with Abby.

The pacing of the story is evenly met from the art by Sanders in every page. The story goes between three different co-occurring events, and the art really allows for the reader to follow along easily. Abby is going after the people who made her, while Dean is trying to run away from them, and we also start to learn a little more backstory about ULTRA. It can be hard to juggle these three separate stories but Kittredge does a nice job to show the interconnections between them. The art is consistent, but injects a different feel to the pace between the high action panels of Abby taking on some ULTRA agents and the more dialogue heavy panels of Dean.

This series did come out of the gate strong, with unique and creative panels and layouts that made this book a standout. However, by issue six they have lost some of the creative fervor. The art is good, but it lost some of the creativity that we have come to look for. Maybe this is an issue to pace the reader, introduce some themes by providing some backstory to ULTRA and history of Dean’s family and their ties to ULTRA. To keep the readers invested, the creative team has to deliver consistency every issue or else it could see a dip in readership over time. With this series still being in the early stages, and still developing the story and characters, it fells like they should be pulling out all the stops; wild splash pages, huge revelations, and plenty of action should be expected. We do get a sort of revelation with the final page, but nothing that readers did not really suspect or should find surprising.

Throwaways #6 was a good addition to the series as a build up to future issues, but as a stand-alone issue it did not really live up to the hype. The pacing is the best part of the issue, with it perfectly timed to not overwhelm the reader, but still provide a lot of information. The rest of the issue is a bit underwhelming from what we have come to expect. Sure, this issue does have a few action sequences, but there is some key creative components missing. This could just be a filler issue, serving as a setup to some heavier issues to come. The fear brought on by this issue is that this series will prove to be just another book about covert government agencies running experiments to enhance humans with super powers.