Leroy Douresseaux on DAMAGED #1

DAMAGED #1 (OF 6)
RADICAL PUBLISHING

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Sam Worthington
CREATORS: Michael Schwarz and John Schwarz
WRITER: David Lapham
ARTIST: Leonardo Manco
COLORS: Kinsun Loh, Jerry Choo, Sansan Saw
LETTERS: Todd Klein
COVER: Alex Maleev
ALTERNATE COVERS: Leonardo Manco with Kinsun Loh (Cover B) and Leonardo Manco (Incentive Cover)
32pp, Color, $3.99

Actor Sam Worthington, whose career exploded a few years ago after appearing in Terminator: Salvation and Avatar, is now in the comic book game. Worthington and his friends, Michael Schwarz and John Schwarz, have formed a graphic novel and intellectual property company called Full Clip Productions.

Michael and John have created the venture’s first comic book, Damaged. This crime comic book from Radical Publishing is written by David Lapham (Stray Bullets) and drawn by Leonardo Manco (Driver for the Dead). Damaged focuses on two brothers committed to justice in different ways. One is a commander with the San Francisco Police Department and works inside the law. The other is a vigilante who works violently beyond it.

In Damaged #1, Captain Frank Lincoln is three weeks from retirement, and the powers that be in San Fran have already appointed his successor as head of the Special Task Force on Organized Crime, a youngster named Lt. Jack Cassidy. A massacre at the home of Dimitri Oloaf, the most powerful man in the Russian mafiya, brings Lincoln and Cassidy together. Frank immediately recognizes that the crime scene relates to his past, and now he has to clean up the past without Cassidy or the rest of the SFPD finding out.

I am annoyed that Damaged seems to be in part a non-Marvel Punisher comic book. Half of the comic book is literally a police drama and the other half is The Punisher, complete with a grizzled veteran cop (the drama) and a scarred, rampaging maniac slash one-man army (The Punisher).

But I like this. I think the story’s strength will lie in a kind of love/hate triangle. There is Frank trying to fend off his by-the-book successor, Jack. Frank will also have to deal with Henry, which will be a hot mess. Henry will likely have to take on the SFPD, especially Jack. Hopefully, it turns out that way, because this does have a lot of potential.