Story by Enrique Carrion
Art by John Upchurch
Vescell #2 is split into two separate, unrelated stories. The first is a tale of a vengeful high-school girl who plots to steal her cheerleader sister’s life, and is ultimately foiled by Moo and Machi. In the second, Moo is called in by Vescell to assess a client for v-trans (a consciousness transfer into a new body) – only this time the client is an artificial intelligence. He denies the claim, and hilarity ensues.
Carrion’s characters lack any depth and are entirely unsympathetic. In the first story, Moo and Machi brutally kill two people – one of which was a high-school jock who was more dumb than evil – with no explanation of why they deserved such a fate. Moo just tramples blindly forward on orders, no consideration given to the scope or consequences of his actions.
The text in the second story is excessive, comprised entirely of exposition paired with a healthy dose of eye-rolling absurdity (an assassin fighting off an attacker with a dildo?). One conversation consisted of some chunky dialogue overlaid on top of a two-page sex scene, actually making me wonder if they’d accidentally mis-paired the text and imagery. There’s even a page that I had to re-read multiple times because it breaks the basic rules of panel-flow.
Upchurch’s characters are generally well constructed, especially facially, but their overall designs are rather boring. The rest of his artwork is just bland, a problem not helped by his almost religious aversion to drawing complete backgrounds. If a panel contains any background at all (most are just a slate of color), it is usually blurred rather than finished.
Vescell #2 as a whole is just a mess. The makings of an interesting high-concept sci-fi noir tale are here, but they’re buried beneath a heap of poor execution, shallow dialogue, and blatant immaturity.
