FBP: Federal Bureau of Physics #3

"The Paradigm Shift," Part Three
written by Simon Oliver
art by Robbi Rodriguez

That's more like it, FBP!  After an excellent start and a solid—if heavily expository—follow-up, FBP delivers its finest early issue, a rapid action thriller and corporate conspiracy fable.

Adam's a little antagonistic, a little too rigid in his own rugged professionalism when it comes to anomalies in physics.  Part of it, no doubt, is cultivated federal-agency swagger and masculine bravado, but we learn here, part of it is personal, Adam's way of reclaiming his birth-father's profession and disassociating himself from his distant and unsympathetic stepfather.

"But the way I saw it, when your old man bails on your birth to go chasing quantum tornados and never comes back...   ...well maybe you've got some unfinished business with physics."  (FBP #3: 2)

Unfortunately for Adam, one of his few friends, fellow FBP agent and partner Jay, is a back-stabbing saboteur, whose dealings with shady corporate tycoons have cornered him into killing Adam and exploding the Bubbleverse into the real world.  Adam is, by his own admission, ironically saved by screwy physics.  Jay's unequivocally villainous actions are somewhat mitigated by his seemingly sincerity at having to betray his partner and his slouched and resigned demeanor at carrying out his criminal task.  Fortunately for Adam, another of his friends, though he would unlikely have considered him nearly as close as Jay prior to his most recent FBP assignment, Cicero is compulsively attentive to details and detects some of Jay's mysterious behavior as well as the strange departure of a truck from the Bubbleverse location, and correctly hypothesizes the nefarious meaning of those things.

Mr. James Crest, disgraced CEO and recent object of a lengthy, high-profile SEC investigation, is an interesting choice of target for Adam and a fine foil for Jay's bosses, who aim to force privatization of physics-related emergency response by catastrophically exploding the Bubbleverse into the real world thereby proving the FBP's ineptitude.  This is corporate espionage at its most violent.  Adam is diligent in his task to save the executive despite his obvious antipathy toward Crest and his business history.

Robbi Rodriguez's artwork continues to impress.  Admittedly, it's more about the pop art possibilities of alternate universes and Cicero's hair, but it's still damn fun to enjoy.  Rico Renzi's colors are unusually bold, but set a dynamic, flashy, otherworldly tone to the series.  Everything's just a little too technicolor to be perfectly familiar, our world but slightly unstable.  His colors pair excellently with Rodriguez's artwork, including full-page gems like Adam and Mr. Crest's escape from the Bubbleverse rooftop (15).

[November 2013]