Booknote: FBP: Federal Bureau of Physics, Vol. 1

Simon Oliver, FBP: Federal Bureau of Physics, Vol. 1: The Paradigm Shift.  New York: Vertigo Comics, 2014. ISBN: 9781401245108.

Adam Hardy is fascinated by the father he never met, a physicist who died making his greatest discovery. Years later, it's a brave new world now where "the impossible is always possible." We find ourselves in a world where the laws of physics are suddenly no longer set in stone: gravity fails in places, wormholes appear out of nowhere, and so on. By now, these events are so common that the federal government has an agency to deal with them: the Federal Bureau of Physics (FBP). Hardy is now an FBP agent, and he is pretty much a slacker. However, his past is about to come back to haunt him.

If you like Ghostbusters and The X-Files, this is definitely a book for you that also tosses in some science along the way. This was a very well-executed story with layers of depth and conspiracy from the government the corporate world. It keep getting deeper and deeper, and I definitely want to keep reading the series. There is even some commentary, so to speak, on the current mode of trying to privatize everything, including government agencies. It says something about often unappreciated and underpaid government workers who do essential work while greedy corporations try to privatize their work and put them out of job (and often botching things up in the process). Sound familiar? But I will not say more. You need to read this. The art on it is very good as well, well worth reading. This volume is a compilation of the first seven issues in the series.

This is one that public libraries must get for their graphic novel collections. Academic libraries with graphic novel collections and/or recreational reading collections will likely want to acquire it. I know I will be ordering it for our library.

I am definitely giving it 5 out of 5 stars.

Disclosure note: The place where I tell you that I read this an e-book review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley. And now that you have been told that, and that it was in exchange for an honest review, I think The Man will be happy for now.