I’ve been reading Binary Gray, the new digital (and paper) comic from Assailant Comics.  I’ll give you some background about what it’s all about (in case you don’t know).  Our fearless hero, Alex Gray, is a nerd and Help-Desk Guy.  Kind of a depressing life, really – he pines for the hot girl, doesn’t seem to have any friends, and is genuinely haunted by the fact that his dad died when he was a kid – he was killed by a super-villain, and Alex blames himself for the death, etc., etc., etc.

So anyway, he gets electrocuted doing his job and wakes up with the power to communicate with machines.  Long story short, he meets a superhero team, he finds “The Agency” [think of the bad guys from Heroes (the TV show)], bad things happen, and he gets ostracized by the good guys.  Then, The Agency kidnaps his mom, tortures her, and ultimately kills her – all in front of Alex.  At this point, he goes all ballistic and shizzle, and his powers evolve to include energy/electricity manipulation.  He kills the baddies, and now he’s alone.

That pretty much brings us to Issue #9.

I liked #9 and #10, because they’re the “and now he’s a badass” story and the “and now he’s a human” story.  I like those bits – especially the badass.  He uses his powers to create an identify, hide, track, and basically kick ass in a spy-like way.  It’s good.  What’s even better is that the powers that seem to matter the most here aren’t frying stuff with his electricity – instead, it’s the “make machines do what I want” powers that kind of save the day here.  #10 has him dealing with the fallout of some decisions and potentially reuniting with the team that saved him back in #2-#5.  Basically, as the comic slides into the latest issue, we find Alex’s origination story wrapping up, so now they can get to the adventures.

What do I think?  I like it.  He’s got powers we’ve all seen before, but rarely are the computer super-folks featured – and he is.  This makes for a good story.  Also, the super team he (may) be joining up with has some pretty neat characters – both from a powers standpoint, but also from simple “cool characters” standpoint.  The art is great (as expected), and the arch-nemesis is really not very nice at all (which is a good thing).

Should you buy this?  Yeah, probably – this entire series is a fun, slightly retro, innocent-type journey.  Reminds me a little of what Justice League was like before they sold out (or even Teen Titans).  I STRONGLY recommend this to folks who are just getting into comics, or those who are tired of the two big publishers crossing over, twisting, killing, resurrecting, and simply exhausting their story lines.  Binary Gray is simply a fun comic about cool characters, nasty bad guys, and neat powers.


Check it out.