The Paybacks Collection
[Collects The Paybacks (2016) #1-4, The Paybacks (2015) #1-4]
by
Donny Cates, Eliot Rahal, Geoff Shaw, Dee Cunniffe and Taylor Esposito
This has been on my to-read shelf for some time and having just taken advantage of a rare full weekend off, I had done a sort and purge of our bookshelves at home and put everything in nice and neat – including literally seperating the read from the to-be-read so now there’s a literall “reading pile” section. From that, this has been my first withdrawal.
Our story follows a group of “super-heroes” who have become repossession agents (a.k.a Repo-Men) for a mysterious figure named Mr. Pierce and their job is to Repo from heroes and villains who have taken huge loans from their shadowy boss to finance their super-powered endeavours (seems to be mainly heroes) and if they cannot repay their debt, well… then like our main team of Paybacks, they get all their stuff repo’d, a shiny bracelet that will kill them slapped onto their wrist and now have to work off what they owe. But now something is going wrong and their repo targets are being killed before they can get to them. So now what?
Expectations were on the higher side as this was a limited run (first by Dark Horse and then by Heavy Metal) by Cates who has been a big favourite of mine in recent years and I’ve enjoyed pretty much all the books I’ve read by him – his recent run on Hulk being a bit the first of his offerings I felt let-down by – and this series was an earlier one during his rise to prominence.
Suffice it to say that this series is definitely Cates at his best. It has a few moments that are less than stellar but for the most part it is good solid story-telling. There is a solid amount of tongue-in-cheekness and parody as well as some nicely creative fun with reference to genre tropes and cliches; added to by solid character design work and amazingly dynamic work by Rahal and Shaw.
It’s clever and well paced and a nicely balanced combination of action, mystery, drama, comedy and even a little bombast here and there. The principle cast is engaging and it is Bloodpouch, Skisquatch and the annoying Night Knight who really stand out – but the rest are no slouches either!
The artwork really does wonders for the story. The design work is very nice as I mentioned above, but the overall flow from page to page is great. There is a real energetic vibe to the layouts and the action scenes pop off the page well – in fact it reminds me at moments of the frenetic action of the Luthor Strode comics.
If you want some off-the-wall action with a simmering mystery underneath with a healthy dose of ensemble banter and chaos, then this is definitely a book to check out and I am stunned as I reach the end of this book that Dark Horse didn’t want to do more of it. I would definitely buy more Paybacks issues if Donny ever decided to write what happens after the insane finale.
Add-on: The collected edition also includes a mini-comic from a Dark Horse Presents issue that shows how Skisquatch was recruited to the team and some other nice bonus material and artwork.
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One Happy Monk 
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