Detective Ari Nassar is about to retire having successfully caught the same serial killer twice - hold the phone, the same serial killer’s struck again? Looks like retirement’s out of the question for old Ari as he sets out to capture the One Hand Killer for a third(!) time.
Meanwhile, Johannes Vale is a grad student obsessed with his missing dad - and he’s also secretly the One Hand Killer?! (Not a spoiler by the way - you find this out almost as soon as he’s introduced at the start) The two go head to head in a tense cat and mouse game that’ll have them both questioning their connections to one another and reality itself.
I’m not a fan of either Ram V or Dan Watters’ writing but both have gotten better over the years to the point where this bumper (it’s 10 issues long) sci-fi crime comic was actually pretty decent. The first half is vastly better than the second, mostly because the answers we’re given and the plot in the latter half are both lacklustre and uninspired, but I still thought that The One Hand and The Six Fingers was ok.
The comic feels quite derivative throughout. I won’t namecheck the movies that came to mind as I was reading this as it’ll give too much away about what to expect - particularly regarding the ending - but if you’ve seen the most famous sci-fi movies of the last half century then you’ll definitely recognise various plot elements as lifted from them.
The format of the book is interesting. The One Hand is written and drawn by Ram V and Laurence Campbell and The Six Fingers by Dan Watters and Sumit Kumar. Both storylines are five issues long, and the book is structured so that you get the issues overlapping - first one by one creative team, then one by the other, and so on - which in turn shows you the storyline from the perspectives of the two protagonists as well as cleverly mirroring the two characters’ fraught connection in the way the story is presented.
I definitely enjoyed Ram V/Laurence Campbell’s side of the book much more than the other. Ram’s writing is more compelling and Campbell’s haunting art is superb - I always enjoyed his contributions to the Mignola-verse in the various titles he worked on over at Dark Horse and his art remains top quality here. I don’t think Watters/Kumar’s part added much to the overall story despite having the racier angle, and Kumar’s art, while not bad, is too bright, whereas Campbell’s dark art perfectly matches the noir tone.
Part of what made me enjoy the first half more was the potential of what was being laid out. After the One Hand Killer dismembers his victims, he daubs cryptic symbols (that look like variations of the Transformers logo) onto the walls in the vic’s blood. What do the symbols mean? Why is he killing? Why is the One Hand Killer three different people? Factor in Johannes’ own mystery of the “arrowhead” his dad gave him, and the question of Ari’s disappeared mistress, and it all added up to a genuinely enthralling puzzler.
And then the second half, where momentum slows down and we’re presented with the underwhelming reveal. Endings don’t ruin stories - the first half is still good regardless of what follows - but it was disappointing that after those fascinating breadcrumbs leading up to it, all the writers had was a flat message and an ending reminiscent of blockbuster sci fi movies that everyone’s seen.
Though the story is set in the 29th century, both artists draw the future much as it looks now, (another clue as to what’s really going on) which makes the comic feel more like what it is: a contemporary crime comic rather than a sci-fi one, or even a hybrid of the two.
You can tell the creators have spent a lot of time thinking about this one. From the title, to the structure, to the little clues sprinkled throughout (the name of the city, a novel someone’s reading) - they clearly cared about this book. I think the ending would’ve been better if they’d chosen to tell the most imaginative narrative conclusion rather than go for that bleak wannabe-profound ending that appeared in so many ‘70s sci-fi films prior to Star Wars. Which, ironically, only makes it feel more unimpressive than not.
Uneven and ultimately a bit hollow, The One Hand and The Six Fingers definitely has its moments though with a few good issues of solid writing and art - worth checking out for crime comics fans.
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