Military capers
Matt hawkins rahsan ekedal
Top cow/Image comics EVERYTHING I know about the US military’s technology, I learnt from Think Tank.
Ok, that may be an exaggeration, but Matt Hawkins and Rahsan Ekedal’s book about a US military think tank really is more informative than you would expect a comic to be.
Its main character, David Loren, was a child prodigy roped in at the age of 14 to join the military think tank called Darpa (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), and put to work designing weapons for the military.
After years of being stuck in a secret underground military complex called CED designing weapons that have hurt, maimed and killed thousands of people, he decides to stop willingly creating instruments of death. Unfortunately, his military masters aren’t going to let one of their best weapons designers go so easily, so he resorts to rebelling from within the system instead, using the tools and tech he developed for the military against them to get what he wants.
The first volume of this Top Cow/ Image series is basically an escape caper, as David decides enough is enough and tries to escape from CED. Think Escape From Alcatraz, but with cooler gadgets and invisible suits. While this story is undoubtedly entertaining, it is only in the second volume that Think Tank really settles into a more assured pace, with international conspiracies, discussions on morals and ethics, and plots that reach out far beyond the walls of the CED.
The reason for this is simple: creators Hawkins and Ekedal initially only expected to release four issues of the book, but the response was so good that they were asked to do more, and they have responded by making this an even richer read.
Hawkins got the idea for Think Tank after hanging out with some friends in the science field, and visiting real-life think tanks such as Darpa (yes, it’s a real thing!), and seeing the scary stuff they produce there.
Now, talking about military sciences is a potential minefield. What’s classified, and what’s not? Will you inadvertently write something the military doesn’t want people to know about?
Hawkins wisely sidesteps this issue by sticking to what’s already public knowledge, and uses it to his advantage. The end of each chapter has something like a glossary of the military and scientific terms, concepts and theories in the book.
While he admits that he has taken some creative liberties with the technology mentioned in the book, Hawkins also claims that it is all based on realworld tech, and that every single thing he mentions is possible. Some of it already exists, like the MQ-9 Reaper drone (Predator B), the Hadron Collider, and Metal Storm.
This element of realism does add to the appeal of the series. By rooting the tech in the real world (as opposed to having it created by aliens, gods, or fantastically super-smart stretchy beings), it was easier to relate to the story and