Writer: Nick Spencer

Artist: Steve Lieber

Colors: Ryan Hill

Letters & Design: Nic J Shaw

 

What is the expected path of your life? You are born and raised to study hard, get good grades, do your civic duties, and to be a good citizen. School becomes college, college becomes a job. You meet someone, marry, have kids and buy a house. This is the picture-perfect image that most Americans consider their dream. But what if, from a very young age, you wanted a life that garnered the most rewards while using the least amount of effort? Since he was a child, Roy was enamored with the “bad guy” in his television stories. They always had the best clothes, the prettiest women, and got wealthy by only using a few bullets and their wits. One day while accompanying his mother to a local bank, he comes face to face with a robber who is so bold, he doesn’t even bother with a mask. Suddenly, something happens that will change Roy’s life forever and set him on a different path. He realizes that he can truly have his cake and eat it too by being the good guy and the bad guy at the same time.

**Mild Spoilers Ahead**

Nick Spencer (Avengers, Iron Man, Thief of Thieves) is a master at the crime comic, and here he brings us face to face with the best of both law enforcement and the criminal element. Only with this title, they are both the same people. The Fix introduces us to Roy and Mac, two detectives in the Los Angeles Robbery and Homicide division, who investigate crimes caused by dangerous, hardened criminals, themselves. With the arrival of the technological age, it is rough for your average thief these days. Identity theft, online scams and hacks have made your average storefront crook obsolete. One sure way to keep up with the dwindling action is to play both sides of the fence. Become a cop and a criminal, which Roy and Mac have down to an art form.  They target a local nursing home to rob not only the afternoon bingo players but a low level retired thug who is told to have a lot of hidden cash in his room by the nurse that Mac is sleeping with. They get chased off by the elderly crook but soon return to investigate their own crime. The partners make deals with rich movie producers, bet on robot death matches, and have an all-around great time. Unfortunately their small time action isn’t enough to repay the local mob boss for whom they work. Josh is a stay at home dad, a health nut, and looks like your kids soccer coach. He is also a cold blooded psychopath who will make you wish you were never born if you cross him. His detective employees owe him a substantial amount of money, and he is quickly losing patience with them. As a last chance, he gives him an assignment that could prove to be their final mission.

Spencer and Artist Steve Lieber have created the perfect crime noir comic, with no protagonist but an extremely charismatic anti-hero in Roy. Spencer deftly mixes hardcore action with laugh out loud humor that make the pages fly through your fingertips. The backstory to Roy’s current lifestyle is so fluid and makes so much sense, I stopped to wonder, why didn’t I think of that? Mac is nothing but a fat party animal who doesn’t even bother to change the gaudy floral shirt that he wore to the robbery of the nursing home while investigating the same crime. We are also treated in the center of the story to one of the most epically disturbing bar conversations that a comic has ever produced. The Fix #1 is a fantastic pilot issue which already has me wishing for a premium cable/Netflix series.

5 Jizzmotrons out of 5