It might have been a perfectly normal home invasion in the middle of the night. The man breaking into the home kicked in the door and announced himself. Husband and wife responded immediately. Faust Mirino didn’t make it out alive. His wife, Cat, takes out the assailant with a one-in-a-million shot. Now she’s wanted for questioning by a top-secret government organization in the debut issue of AfterShock Comics’s The 06 Protocol. London-based writer Lee Turner opens an engrossing cloak-and-dagger pursuit series with the aid of Brazil-based artist Cliff Richards. Colorist Matt Herms adds atmospheric depth to a very promising first issue. 

Cat shoots the guy straight through the neck while diving through the pitch black night. Naturally, the police investigators are going to have some questions about that. The body is nowhere to be found, but they saw the whole attack on footage from a doorbell surveillance camera. Cat doesn’t have any answers for the police, but she will HAVE to come up with some answers when a top-secret group named W.A.S.P. kidnaps her and hauls her in for questioning. It’s not a very nice way to go about an interview, but W.A.S.P. isn’t exactly a nice organization. Clearly, Cat’s got a lot to deal with in the absence of her late husband.

Turner puts the reader through the wringer in the first chapter of the new series. She strategically places clues in and around the narrative that make it totally clear that not everything is...totally clear. The secrecy and suspense of Turner’s thriller wind their way through the first issue with a swiftness that feels like something new even though the overall premise has been run through stage, page, and screen countless times over the years. Turner’s clever fusion of sci-fi intrigue hits the page with a storytelling dynamic that wisely refrains from trying to completely reinvent the genre. 

Richards reaches for a shadowy earthbound style that still manages to feel fantastic and over-the-top where it needs to. The story makes its impression through occasionally explosive panels of action in and amidst the drama and intrigue. Some of the action doesn’t quite have the impact it could, but there are moments that feel pleasantly overwhelming as well. Richards captures the drama from appealingly skewed angles. Though she is the center of the story, Richards keeps his distance from Cat. Far from totally heroic, she seems approachably mysterious in a world that is given a dark and minimalist depth by Herms’s colors.

Everything is firmly established in the first issue as it launches the series into action in the final pages. Mother and daughter are on the run from a dangerous government organization. It’s got so many possibilities that might make a unique impact on the comics page if Turner and company can maintain the right dynamic in the future. The challenge may be to maintain the mystery of Cat and her daughter while slowly revealing more and more of the world of the series.

Grade: A