So maybe a lot of people know about the entity known as P.T.S. They think it’s just a bunch of eggheads in a lab, though. They don’t know about the advanced military tech. They don’t know about the private army. They don’t know that the chairman of the organization essentially has the nuclear launch codes. If the general public knew any of that, there would be a lot of questions to answer. The general public may not know  a whole lot about it, but things are about to get messy for P.T.S. In Rat City #8. Writer Erica Schultz continues her sci-fi action series with artist Zé Carlos and colorist Jay David Ramos.

Lieutenant Cairn  is identified as a deviant by the director of P.T.S. He’s not real happy with Cairn. Boze and his team want to capture Cairn in order to dissect him. They want to know hat he is. The director already claims to know what he is: he’s “pure evil from the depths of hell.” The director wants him destroyed. He relays this to Victoria. Tells her that lethal measures of authorized. So Cairn is going to be hunted down and destroyed. That’s the plan. If he really IS evil from the depths of hell, that might be a bit of a challenge for Victoria. 

Schultz intensifies the attention in an issue that moves around a lot of elements quite effectively. That makes of drama and action begin to show signs of reaching some sort of a climax. There are a lot of different people with a lot of different concerns that are all coming together in different different ways from different angles. It's actually a very impressively complicated story once, all of the elements are fully taken into account. It's difficult to say exactly what it's all going to amount to win all is said and done. However, Schultz continues to make it very impressive and entertaining.

Carlos has a solid sense of execution with respect to light and shadow. Ramos provides luminosity and depth in a story that delivers quite a bit of drama to the page. Most of the drama is being delivered in the form of composition. Carlos frames shot quite well. Tends to move around on the page in a way is capable of delivering to anyone even if they're not familiar with what's going on in the s on the page. And it's fun to watch it develop.

The mixture of science and fantasy and horror is kind of compelling. However, in reaching out to all of the different genres that it reaches out to, the overall impression of Rat City feels a little muddled. ideally a mashup like this should be one where every genre that's touched on informs on every other genre that's touched on in a way that amplifies everything. As it is, it almost seems like Schultz is trying to reach for too many different elements and cram them all into a single narrative. It works. It just doesn't work very well. Yet.

Grade: B