This is more 3.5 than 4 but I go with 4 because of the truly beautiful graphics.

Same as first volume this one is also "angry" story. As our hero detective Cal works on finding the mysterious Nexus android he comes into conflict .... with almost everyone. And I dont mean conflict as conflict-during-the-investigation but conflict in way of standard we-hood-you-cop-we-hate-you conflict or you-privileged-we-hate-you. Just pick up every current slogan and it looks like authors decided to apply it to the story. I mean every work is reflection of the society where it came to life. But for me it is lazy writing to just repeat the everyday slogans to make the story click. If it clicks, it will be clicking only for the current age and after that it wont click at all. Make the story good and introduce all the critique you want but make it subtle, true moral of the story - that has the biggest effect.

Maybe this was the element that I had problem with - I mean, you gotta admit that there is saturation with these justified-hate elements in everyday life, in media, amongst people .... everywhere. It is not something I want to read in comics (entire world is currently like some crazy episode of Preacher, comics should be an escapism). So .... social upheaval......OK.... We have Nexus androids in role of oppressed (although I dont remember anyone oppressed being capable of single-handedly splitting human in half), cops-are-bad cliche and they betray their 'hoods by being cops [or working for corpo's] .... Only cliche that I can [kinda] live with is Big Evil Corporation, Tyrell Corp. Because they are the ultimate baddies, and our guys should fight against them not between themselves. Right? Well, I guess we might see this in volume 3, because in volume 2 it is still infighting for different reasons between good guys.

Story does get disjointed at the end - at one point there is a rather weird kung-fu bare hand showdown between Cal, mysterious Nexus android (wont say much more in order not to spoil the story), mysterious Asa and crazy homicidal Nexus android. It is almost as somebody decided to go all-superhero in this part. As I said .... weird.

It all ends up on a cliffhanger and I have to say I am interested how story progresses. Tyrell deciding to involve their .... executive branch (?) .... in the slum area surely raises the stakes. I wonder what will happen next. I just want creative team to concentrate on the story progress and not that much on incorporating the current politics in it. It is dystopia, we already know it, dont press it.

Art as always is wonderful, even that weird part I mentioned is drawn very well, it is just that it looks so out of place in Blade Runner novel.

So all in all, very good volume number 2, looking forward to next chapter.

Recommended to fans of SF noir detective stories and of course Blade Runner universe. ( )