Throwaways #1

Throwaways #1 starts out in media res with Abby and Dean, our protagonists, in a shootout with a group of commandos in an abandoned parking lot. Dean suddenly reveals he has some sort of telekinetc powers and kills everyone with shards of glass. Then he passes out and we see the chain of events that lead to the shootout. Abby is a veteran who spent time at a black-site and Dean is a punk who is constantly being beat up and saved by his girlfriend, Kimiko. There's a shady agency who is after them for reasons as of yet unknown.

My favorite aspect of the book was the art on the action scenes, which I figure is good since there's a lot of them on this issue. Dean's powers manifest on an amazing full-page panel on the prologue and the first time we see Abby's powers it's on a panel which follow her as she takes down two commandos, the book cleverly circles out objects of interest so we're able to follow what's happening, and in Abby's panel what's circled are… her fists! It's a great touch and Sanders establishes the book's idiosyncratic style with details like that and the elaborate layouts.

The lettering by Rachel Deering is also really good on this book and there's a great synergy between her work and Sanders' art. Aside from the more obvious examples, like the panels that are sound effect-shaped, Deering helps bring the action to life through details like making the sounds of a door slamming really large.

But I felt there were a few moments where the plot took a leap that could've been explained better, I didn't fully understand the layout of the storage room Dean and Kimiko run into when they are shot at. And then Kimiko flees off-panel and that event leads directly to the scene at the start off the book, so I needed to re-read the issue to fully parse in what order the events happened. The book's prologue finishes with Dean taking a stray shard of glass (!) to his neck and that gets resolved very quickly later on, I guess there's something else at play here which Kittredge hasn't fully explained but it did give me pause the first time I read through it.

The artist and letterer do some fantastic, inventive work on this issue and the writing did make me curious about where the series will go but I found some of the plot confusing, fleshing out the story with later issues should help with that. If you are interested in a story espionage and conspiracies, it's definitely worth your while.