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THINGS TO CLICK
- - - - - - - - ONLINE COMICS
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REVIEW
Written by Chuck Dixon
Diego Zhao is "Rush," and he is a dedicated finder of missing persons, in the mold of a thousand other hard-bitten and street-wise private investigators from American crime novels. The difference is that he is constantly behind the wheel of a fast car (his "office" ) and he never runs into traffic gridlock (he is apparently in New York City, where I have learned there isn't apparently that much traffic). [Below] The Pontiac Solstice. The black paint scheme is called "Mysterious."You get a choice of nine colors altogether at the Pontiac web site here. Rush is so tough (unless he is flash-backing to his sad origin story in which a child died), that as he is chasing "gearhead" (a villain) through the streets of issue #3, he pays no attention (nor does Black Canary, who is along for the ride) to the pedestrians that go flying into the air from the impact of Gearhead's car. Maybe Rush only cares for his goal of nabbing the missing person Gearhead has captured, but I would think Black Canary might notice the body count accumulating from the hit and runs happening before her eyes (she's a Justice League member or something, right?) No, the two glibly keep chatting. What's a little blood on the street? (But none on the car, an expertly drawn Pontiac Solistice convertible). In some panels Rush's convertible has a shattered, spider-web cracked windshield, in another panel there's no crack! Maybe a new windshield slides up and down as needed, like the "busbar" that pops out from beneath the car to get "juice" from the third rail when Rush drives on subway tracks. Since Pontiac is financing this series to advertise their new Solstice automobile, I look forward to hearing about how that busbar works, it's an engineering marvel. It is also interesting that Rush can drivea car at a high rate of speed through an underground subway station without becoming an instantaneous mass-murderer. Issue #4 starts off with a garbage truck chasing Rush and his car off a ferry. Rush eludes the vehicle by stopping at the end of a pier, promptly followed by the garbage truck which not only misses him but also lacks brakes, hurling off the edge of the pier into the water. Rush drives off. Goodbye drowning dead people! Rush is constantly talking on his cell phone, but he never calls for help when dead or wounded citizens are left in his wake. The visual continuity in these stories doesn't always make sense. There are backgrounds at times, but too often the figures float around in an existential void where the only indication of a physical world around them are Jack Kirby 'speed" lines. What backgrounds there are change so quickly from panel to panel there isn't much chance for orientation. For example, the trash truck chase starts on one kind of pier, that quickly concludes on a pier that looks completely different. How did the vehicles go from one pier to the other? I have no idea, there's not a clue in the story and art. Maybe the car also comes equipped with a matter transporter. The thin, anorexic women in these stories always have their long hair blowing about like a spilled bowl of spaghetti noodles caught in a gale. All that flying hair makes sense when riding in Rush's car (he always drives fast with the top down - - no rain in this city) but seems a little odd when (for example) Black Canary is standing and chatting inside a movie theater and her hair is whipping around like snakes in a wind tunnel. I appreciate the pure pulp nonsense of these tales when writer Chuck Dixon has a few pages together which actually contain threads of a plot. I'm ready to believe there is a character named Diego Zhao who has his office in his car and he finds missing/kidnapped people, that he is haunted by a past disaster that cost a kid her life. It's not particularly unique but I don't know why something more coherent and thought-out can't be done with it than what has been done so far in these four issues of "Rush City." - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Updated Link: This from the online newspaper Arizona Republic:
Of course there is a Wikipedia entry on the series, too. Also on the car 'Rush' drives, the Pontiac Solstice. DC Comics still has the promotional web site with issue #0 online to view. Newsarama has a page previewing the series here. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Gallery of sample pages from the"Rush City" series
RUSH CITY has it's own web site. |
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On page three in issue number one of Rush City, Rush pulls up on a city street corner ("21 Jump St., the sign says) to meet a client who is hiring him to locate her missing daughter. Strewn across the sidewalk is the detritus of urban living: scraps of paper, wads of gum, spoons, abandoned knives, guns(!)... Looming over the scene is a huge electric pole, the wires from it looping so low it is an invitation to a garroting. In the panel a semi-truck pulling up beside Rush's convertible is about to rip through the pretty wires. 
HOSTING AND DESIGN FROM
eeweems.com
