John Le Carré taught me to love stories where people make dumb decisions and you know things will all end poorly, and this is one of those. I wasn’t sure it was going to work for me, but the premise is interesting on a couple of levels, and it is fun to watch the train wreck play out on page. The art isn’t my favorite, but I think it dulled what would have been some even grosser scenes otherwise.

Like the first issue, there’s enough here to like but also some I could have done without. The flashbacks work for me, but the story feels a bit rushed—and as though it will need to rush more if it’s going to conclude in issue 3, as seems to be promised.

Imagine taking Star Wars, putting it in a blender with other sci-fi franchises, and then slapping an R rating onto what the results. It mostly works, especially because it’s so transparent about that being its approach, but as dumb as it is for Star Wars to pretend that its blasters can bloodlessly kill the bad guys, I prefer that to seeing the gory results of this series.