This isn't a large graphic novel, being a collection of a comic book that only ran to three issues, in 2004. It doesn't have a particularly involved storyline either, taking a while to set up the concept, then doing little with it to move a plot forward. The characters aren't that deep, the primary trio having limited speech capabilities and no propensity for idle chatter, and few others get much to do. However, it's far from basic for two excellent reasons. One is that many of the design choices made by artist Frank Quitely are fascinating and the other is that the book carries an emotional punch that truly resonates. This is a book that may well make you cry.

Part of that impact is in the choice of three lead characters, each of which is a missing pet. In fact, the covers of the original three comic books are the missing posters circulated by their families to try to bring them home. Bandit is a brown labrador mix, friendly and approachable, and there's a reward available for his return. Tinker is a ginger striped cat with adorable white tips to his nose, paws and tail. And Bandit is a bunny with a black patch over one eye, his missing poster touchingly made by kids, Johnny and Claire, but finished up by mum. We're already on their side even before we meet them.

Now, they're the We3 of the title, the issue numbers corresponding to their assignment codes in a U.S. Airforce laboratory. They're not your usual test subjects though, sitting in cages to be jabbed with the latest experimental substance to go horribly wrong in a science fiction story. They're the first examples of a sort of uplift programme, enhanced biologically and mechanically to be able to hold basic conversations, use a serious array of weaponry built into their substantial armour and to infiltrate dangerous foreign places to bump off tinpot dictators with extreme prejudice. That's what they're doing in the initial pages of this book before returning to the lab for orders.

Most of these pages unfold without any dialogue at all, a brave way to begin a comic book series. Many feature interesting and unusual visuals: shots from the side when we expect the front; one image over a full double page spread; a cutaway panel to show that a pet supplies truck contains something very different from what we might expect. Even when the dialogue begins, it's spoken by bodies whose heads are off the top of the page. That's because what's really interesting here is a jet engine being assembled in under forty-eight hours by a colony of rat biorgs. We don't care what Senator Dan Washington looks like, even if he carries a VIP badge. That trend continues. We care about the animals not the humans from the very beginning.

Washington is there to decommision the We3 project, even though it's clearly wildly successful. It isn't because he's a good guy either, wanting to give the animals their freedom. He couldn't care less about them. The only person who seems to care about them other than us is Roseanne Berry, introduced as "their Doctor Dolittle". She looks Native American, though we're never given clear guidance on that. What matters is that she cares and that she doesn't lock them in that evening according to established protocol. And off they go, looking for home. That's the plot in a nutshell, already clear after only a handful of pages.

And so, rather than belabour the point that that's basically it, I'll return to how Quitely drew this. The next sequence unfolds with six consecutive pages that contain eighteen equally sized panels, rather like security cam footage but without the rounded edged we might expect. The only time I have seen anything similar, like in Frank Miller's 'The Dark Knight Returns', that was exactly what it was and the panels were the screens. Here, this sequence recounts the escape of We3 from the lab and the building, feeling exquisitely claustrophobic in such tiny panels and with more nuance than the dialogue-free approach ought to carry.

Yet, when they burst free, Quitely gives us a full two page spread for a single image. That would seem large in any comic book but after a hundred and eight panels in only six pages, it feels like an IMAX screen burst in through our front wall. Sure, there's dialogue to hammer home just how dangerous these animals are, freshly out in the world without restraints: "surgically engineered, bio-modified organisms, armed by the Air Force and trained to kill." They're "instinctual, amoral" and they lack fear of death. C'mon. The dog is equipped with surface-to-air missiles. We get it. On their part, of course, they just want to go home and that's where the story unfolds.

The other notable design choice for me was a clever use of perspective. There's another two page spread of a single scene, this time the cat going straight through a swathe of armed soldiers, but it doesn't depict a single action; it depicts a whole sequence of them shown at once through a sort of overlay of smaller panels that gradually angle from right to left to show panoramic motion in a thoroughly unique way. There's even a pristine touch to wrap the sequence: Tinker lost a claw, so there was damage on both sides, albeit wildly disproportionately applied.

There's so little story here that I can't really tell you anything about it once it's set into motion or there'll be nothing left for you to discover for yourself. However, I will say that Grant Morrison, in most ways a less interesting contributor as writer than Quitely is as an artist—though, of course, I would bet money that they discussed everything together ahead before any of it was drawn—but he does effortlessly pluck our heartstrings here. There are scenes as we go with emotional impact but the power of the ending almost comes out of nowhere to rook us between the eyes. I imagine readers who aren't particularly impressed by how the lack of story unfolds throughout getting to that point and suddenly realising that there are tears rolling down their cheeks.

The more you find unusual design choices in sequential art fascinating the more you'll get out of the look of this book. That's surely at least primarily on Quitely. However, even if you don't, I dare you not to find a tug in the heart by the time the book ends and that's on Morrison. This is a slim and seemingly inconsequential graphic novel until, well, it isn't. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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