Hello and happy Friday, gentle readers. This week I am excited to write about a gem of a book from WildStorm comics that I feel was probably a little overlooked when it first came out. I may not know exactly how the story ends, but it sure starts off with a bang.

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The Programme: Peter Milligan’s Cold War Turned Hot

For a writer whom I generally like, Peter Milligan sometimes frustrates me. I’ve already written about how much I liked his Human Target; his work with Mike Allred and others on X-Force/X-Statix is tremendous; even his short Animal Man run is creative and exciting and a worthy successor to Grant Morrison’s take. Other times, though, I find his ideas don’t really hold together (see: Greek Street, Infinity Inc., Skreemer). So after finishing the first six issues contained in The Programme: Vol. 1, I am holding out hope that he can hold the story together through the final six. Because there is a lot already to recommend about the story.

The elevator pitch of The Programme, effectively, is, “If the United States and the Soviet Union had an arms race during the Cold War, couldn’t they have also had competing super-soldier programs as well?” Not a terribly original idea, to be sure, but Milligan adds a few interesting twists that make for a generally surprising and thrilling read.

In 2008, America is fighting an entrenched war in “Talibstan” (an unfortunately re-named Afghanistan that neither distracts from nor softens the reference to the real-world conflict), when a long-dormant and previously unknown Soviet super-soldier appears and obliterates a deployment of American troops. He is greeted as a saviour by the people in the region, which unsurprisingly doesn’t sit well with the American president. He directs his new advisor in the region to come up with some kind of solution to this problem, and in her investigations she discovers the existence of an American super-soldier with no memory of his past and no idea of his potential power. The CIA brings him to a secure government facility in an attempt to jumpstart his abilities — without asking permission first — and soon after that the reader discovers that there were three other Soviet superbeings developed in the 1950s. And they may or may not be terribly pleased to find out what has happened to their country in the intervening 55 or so years.

Milligan populates the book with over a half-dozen important point-of-view characters, and he sometimes jumps back and forth between them — and between decades in their lives — every few pages or so. This constantly shifting perspective could be difficult to keep up with, but he is ably assisted in the storytelling by artist C.P. Smith and especially by colourist Jonny Rench, who gives each setting a distinctive set of tones and shades. This allows Milligan to play with the way the plot unfolds, doling out just enough information about the characters and their motivations without showing his entire hand. The creative team does a great job of showing not telling, using flashbacks to explain not only characters’ backstories but also their current motivations.

Smith uses a lot of heavy inks in The Programme, which I find sometimes overwhelms the characters and makes the pages a little difficult to look at, but otherwise his art is very effective. The faces and body language of his characters are very clearly defined without being photorealistic, and his use of a wide variety of panel shapes and page layouts make for a good pace in the action sequences yet leave room for the quieter story beats to breathe when necessary. And I’ve mentioned it before, but Rench’s colours are a standout, enhancing the art and the narrative equally well. For a story that I’m only halfway through, The Programme is well worth a read. Now I just need to find the second volume to see how it all plays out.

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I didn’t stick to simply exploring the unexpected fallout of 20th-century idealism this week, though. Here are a couple more things that grabbed my attention.

Music: I finally started listening to TV on the Radio’s Seeds, released last November, and though it’s not mind-blowingly original or transcendently perfect, it’s a good TVotR album that sounds basically like what fans have come to expect. It’s a little softer and not quite as ambitious as Return to Cookie Mountain or Dear Science (my personal favourite of their catalogue), but that’s not to say they’re simply coasting or resting on their laurels. “Happy Idiot” is a dance-inspired song about someone barely managing after the end of a relationship; upbeat in tempo but downbeat in practically every other aspect, which pulls on my heartstrings in just the right way. Two other standout tracks, “Winter” and “Lazerray,” come factory-installed with a pair of great rock-and-roll hooks, and the haunting “Test Pilot” is a slow and layered song that reminds me of some of the quieter tracks from Silent Alarm-era Bloc Party, which is always a positive thing. It’s not groundbreaking but it’s really good and that’s all that matters to me at this point.

Movies: I re-watched the French-Canadian film Starbuck over the weekend, and found myself enjoying it just as much as I did the first time. It’s a film about David Wozniak (played by the charismatic and talented Patrick Huard), an aimless middle-aged man who spends most of his time making deliveries for his family’s butcher shop (poorly) and trying to avoid visits from loan sharks he owes money to (also poorly). His life takes a turn for the even more complicated when it’s discovered that he has fathered over 500 children thanks to his constant visits to a sperm bank between 1988 and 1990, and not only that, nearly 150 of them are filing a class-action lawsuit against the fertility clinic in the hopes of discovering his identity. The plot might sound a little familiar, as writer-director Ken Scott was later hired to helm the American remake Delivery Man (which stars Vince Vaughn so I’m probably never going to see it). The original film might get a little treacly at times, but it’s worth watching if only because Huard is such a dynamic actor that I find it difficult to take my eyes from him whenever he’s onscreen. He’s got a knack for shifting between broad and subtle when the moment calls for it, and he basically carries the film on his back. Another standout is Antoine Bertrand’s performance as David’s best friend and lawyer, who not only has good chemistry with Huard but also great comedic timing. Starbuck may not be terribly easy to track down but it’s worth at least one viewing, if not more.

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That’s about it for me this week. Until next time, if you’re going to dive into a Cold War story, make sure you bundle up, because the temperature is dropping (at least, it is in my neighborhood). I’ll see you in seven days.