Bandit, Tinker and Pirate are three pets who just want to go home. This collection of Vertigo's three-issue release tells the tale of a dog, a cat and a rabbit, who, like their Incredible Journey
–style forebears, work together as they travel through a hostile human world. The difference here is in the awful loss of innocence wreaked by human ingenuity upon the animals. They've been bioengineered to act as military killing machines, but, as the covers reveal, they started out as house pets, and readers will feel heart-tugging empathy even as the former pets are driven to acts of shocking violence while escaping from the military. Morrison, perhaps the greatest writer in comics today, endows his animals with synthesized cyborg speech in which they express their most basic desires for warmth, food and love, as well as their attempts to process their unnatural capacities for violence. "Bad dog," Bandit repeatedly scolds himself after taking down yet another soldier. Quitely's art consists of lucid images of mayhem and sweetness that, in the most impressive spreads, fractalize to express the way these animals "experience time and motion differently." It's a groundbreaking and bravura performance. This is Morrison's most accessible tale ever, and one that is destined to be a classic. (July)
