Recovery Incorporated.

Michael Penick
Co-creator, Writer, Penciler, Inker, Letterer, Colorist.

Dean Deckard
Co-creator.

Chris Sotomayor
Colorist.

John Rauch
Colorist.

Steve Colle
Editor.

Not for sale in a conventional sense, but you may try contacting Michael through his Kickstarter page.

The devil is in the details.

A quick flip through of Recovery Incorporated shows me a 'heist' themed comic. A job being performed. A thing gets stolen. A return to the 'everyday world.' Another job coming through, with the comic concluding with you seeing that 2nd job underway.

The artwork is fantastically detailed. Metallic surfaces, glass surfaces are rendered using lots of gradations and shading that make them look real.

The main character, Mia Raven (modeled after Catherine Zeta-Jones' appearance) is very sexy, evocative and fun to follow around in her story. I can almost hear CZJ's voice in my head when reading her lines.

Mia Raven is a professional high tech agent who can sneak into impossible to reach places to well, 'recover' what's been taken away from you. For a price. A big price. Her attitude matches the look of the comic in a way: the way everything's rendered clean and precise mirrors Mia's approach to her work.

There's a few 'flashback' scenes with an olive-toned nostalgic look to them, set in Portugal.

Almost like a magazine.

The unusual proportions, oversized and a bit wider ratio than a standard comic contribute to this being more on par with a magazine. That has its benefits and drawbacks. You get more real estate as a creator per page, but the flow of the story gets constricted somewhat.

When I was a kid I would open up the Sunday Paper to the funny pages section and a big name property like Peanuts or Pogo would get a half-page treatment. That's what Recovery Incorporated feels like to me. Like I would get these pages -one at a time- every Sunday.

But it tries to be a movie.

Story-wise, I am frustrated again. It has to do with movie effects. I would say a lot of them work just fine in comics: blurry images, fog, back and forth cutting between two faces. But just not flashbacks. Not ever. I don't know why that is, maybe because when we watch a movie we're passive observers willingly being taken along a path whose chronology (passing of time) is dictated to you. You go forward, you go back. Time condenses, it expands according to the story. Comics are much more personal. The reader is supplying the rhythm, the passage of time according to their attention span and how long it takes them to get through the words. At merely 28 pages, Recovery Incorporated gets its legs cut out from under it with these jarring flashback scenes. Frustrating as well was the handing over of Mia as a little girl to her Uncle to raise her, and then a return to her childhood pages later with her... Uncle? Dad? getting shot. At least I assume it was her Uncle, yet in the first flashback he insisted he was now "The Father."

But then it 'recovers' itself.

Recovery Incorporated does get its 'legs' if you will by the last three or four pages of the story. There's an intriguing 'recovery' underway that involves catching up and overtaking a plane flight to New Zealand. How she does it I won't tell you, but it was kinda cool.

Special note:

Tuesday comic book reviews are going on a hiatus until Jan 11, where I will be busy launching my Kickstarter Campaign for Mayfield Eight Parts 3 and 4!

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