FBP: Federal Bureau of Physics #5

"Things That Have Been"
written by Simon Oliver
art by Robbi Rodriguez and Rico Renzi

Following the tumultuous events in FBP's first main story arc, the emergence of a conspicuous urban bubbleverse compounded with an ultimately successful corporate conspiracy to privatize physics-related phenomena, protagonist Adam Hardy takes a few personal days away from the office to visit his uncle, smoke some exceptional weed, peruse his father's research notes, and find out what actually happened to him on the quantum tornado run that killed him.  Meanwhile, the fallout of privatization has begun.  Adam—who apparently doesn't share his real name with strangers—gets a sales pitch from a newly legalized physics insurance salesman at a roadside diner.  Upon returning to FBP headquarters he finds a mass exodus of agents have abandoned ship for the private sector, leaving few remnants of the Bureau to carry out work on behalf of the government.

Compared to the rapid-fire pace of the first four issues, "Things That Have Been" is quiet and a bit listless, but it's a welcome change that proves Oliver's vision for the series can sustain fine character development as well as wild, contorted, sci-fi thrills.  Adam's a very guarded character.  He gives unimaginative aliases (like Larry Moss) to strangers.  He wears a baseball cap deep over his brow almost all the time to shade his eyes and cover his face.  He slouches and tries to sit alone at the bar.  But, perhaps in the easy haze of his high, perhaps just in the comfortable company of his father's strange but friendly goat-herding brother, Adam opens up a little.  And he's oddly charming.

Adam's father, research physicist Caleb Hardy, seems to have disappeared (and likely died) under strange, but not necessarily unnatural, circumstances.  During a Baja storm-chasing expedition with a posse of fellow scientists and his brother Eli, the tornado unexpectedly and without explanation changed its course, consuming Caleb and tossing his dirt bike far away.  The mystery, however, hinges on some of his father's missing research files, the last three months of notes.  It seems he was truly on to something, and Lance Blackwood, the young man who also took the final video, seems to be at the heart of it.  "Things That Have Been" also introduces Adam's likely new partner:  Rosa Reyes.  We may have just met her, but she seems formidable, and a woman on the team and in the FBP seems a little overdue.

[January 2014]