Comics Review: BLADE RUNNER: ORIGINS

BLADE RUNNER ORIGINS: VOLUME ONE by K. Perkins and Mellow Brown, writers and Fernando Dagnino, artist. (Titan Comics, August 2021) Trade paperback, 112 pages. ISBN # 1787735877/9781787735873 Contains Issues #1-4 

Summary on the Goodreads website . . . . .

Travel to the world of Blade Runner 2009 and discover the origins of the BLADE RUNNER DIVISION.

When a Tyrell Corporation scientist working on an experimental new type of Replicant is discovered dead in her laboratory, the victim of an apparent suicide, LAPD detective CAL MOREAU is called in to investigate. 

     What he uncovers is a conspiracy of silence so deadly it could change the world as he knows it. Set ten years before the events of the first Blade Runner film, this is the world on the cusp of environmental collapse, and the beginning of the mass Off-world migration to the Off-world colonies. 

     

Through its rain-soaked streets, LAPD Detective CAL MOREAU, a PTSD sufferer, must travel as he attempts to unravel the truth behind a seemingly routine suicide that soon reveals itself to be just the thin end of a vast conspiracy, one that runs to the very top of the Tyrell Corporation tower.  

My Four-Star Review on the Goodreads website . . . . .

Surprisingly, this series has been less popular with reviewers than the other BLADE RUNNER offerings from Titan Comics. For me, this is the series that grabs my interest, from the characters, the storyline, and the atmospheric art. I was kind of indifferent to the very first series.ORIGINS makes me want to revisit that, and the other spin-offs and give them a second chance.

     This takes place ten years before the events of the BLADE RUNNER film, and relates the early days of the Tyrell Corporation into the Nexus phase of robot/android development. The alleged suicide of a Tyrell bioengineer brings detective Cal Moreaux into the investigation. His work reveals a cover-up and a murder committed by a Nexus 5 prototype. 

This first story arc is a well-written introduction to the continuing story, and holds a lot of promise for great things to come.