Today, Taylor and Drew are discussing Zero 7, originally released April 23rd, 2014.

Taylor: Beaches are memorable places. Most obviously, they are pleasant and warm — a veritable buffet of sensory delights. But beaches are also places of mystery and harbors of the strange. They’re the border between two worlds. On the one side you have dry land, man’s habitat and therefore a place of life. On the other side you have the wet desert of the ocean, a place that while beautiful, can’t sustain human life. However, long ago, man came from the ocean, making the watery depths paradoxically a place of life as well as death for mankind. For these reasons (and others) many gravitate to beaches around the world to enjoy scenery and delights as well as muse on the meaning of all things philosophical. Given these themes, it’s no wonder that Zero now finds itself musing on the sandy boundary. It’s the perfect setting for issue 7, which sees the tides of the narrative shifting in an unexpected and thought provoking direction.

Zero and Roman Zizek are in Ciudad Juarez on business. Zizek is making a deal with a local gang lord to achieve things that are unknown to us. Zizek tells Zero the reason for this is that the agency is moving in a different direction. As a result, he’s having Sara Cooke — his superior and lover — murdered. Zizek plans on having Zero supplant him one day as the leader of the Agency, but he’s unprepared for that day to come minutes after he reveals his plan. Zero kills Zizek, seemingly going rogue against a possible rogue agent.

This issue is a study in philosophy. While that can be said of this series as a whole, I found this issue to be particularly meditative. In many ways the events of here seem to be the sounding board for writer Ales Kot’s musings on love, betrayal, loyalty, and death. While there is some major shit that goes down, it all seems to take a backseat to the tone that Kot establishes early in this issue.

This tone is set in large part by this issue’s setting. Ciudad Juarez is well known for being one of the bloodiest cities in the western hemisphere. Drugs and murder are the rule here, not the exception. In a place such as this, it seems no small wonder that death is on the mind of both Zero and Zizek. In a strange (but eerily natural) way, this is related beaches. When in the car while going to their appointment, Zizek asks Zero about his experiences with them.

Zero’s response is atypical. As Zizek points out, most people feel something when they go to the beach. For Zero, however, it’s different. He doesn’t think of the beach as a place of rest and relaxation. For him it is a place of agony (which I’ll talk about more in a second). Zizek, on the other hand, finds that beaches make him question why he does the things he does for the Agency. Of course, the things he does mostly deal with death, so for both him and Zero beaches aren’t exactly paradise. This meditation on death pervades the issue and with it brings up the notion of betrayal. Indeed, given that first Zizek and then Zero betray their superiors by murdering them, it’s hard not to draw the connection between the two. It’s quite stunning the way Kot has intertwined all these themes — beaches, death, betrayal — into one coherent theme. The result is that you don’t so much read this issue as feel it. Simply put, this is emotional story telling at its best.

The artwork of Matt Taylor reflects this tone remarkably well throughout the issue. Zero’s facial expressions are a particular standout, and could basically tell this story on their own. Near the beginning of the issue we see Zero standing on a beach in agony, his hands soaked in blood. When and where exactly this is taking place is hard to say. It could be after Zero killed Zizek or it could be a flashback to when he killed an actor clamoring for transparency. Whether it’s either or neither of these is beside the point. Taylor’s illustrations depict a visit to the beach that is nothing but unpleasant.

I love the silent story telling taking place on these two pages. First, Taylor gives us a nice introduction to the beach, making it seem almost pleasant as he shows the waters lapping up around Zero’s feet. However, things quickly turn for the worse, first with bloodstained hands and then with an agonized scream on Zero’s face. Additionally, the color work of Joride Bellaire is fantastic. As Zero contemplates the blood on his hand the scene pulls out to reveal the ocean again, only this time instead of being blue it’s blood red, just like Zero. The connection and change of the ocean to red is powerful and makes the scene intense beyond words. Smartly, none are used or needed.

Drew, what did you think of this beach induced issue? Any ideas on what exactly is going down with the Agency? Also, what did Zero see in that room in the gang lord’s mansion? That episode plays a big part in this issue — why do you think that is?

Drew: Oh man, that scene with the room. We only get the faintest hint about what might be going on there, but Kot and Taylor give almost a quarter of the issue to teasing it.

Zero’s counterpart suggests some true horrors are going on behind that wall — some gut-turning combination of rape, pedophilia, and necrophilia — but Zero just sits down and takes another drink. Maybe it’s because he all knows they’re about to die, but it works to lull us into a sense of passivity before shocking us with those rapid-fire action beats. The issue basically accelerates right to its closing sequence of Zizek’s body, leaving us with a distinct “what the hell just happened?” feeling.

That command of pacing really controls the emotional payoffs here, making Taylor an absolutely brilliant choice for this issue. Nine pages are completely sans any copy, and a handful more are almost textless, making this issue all about his layouts and choices of image. Much of the issue is given over to widescreen shots focusing on the environment of the issue. Whether that’s a landscape or repeated shots of that door, humans are rarely the focus here.

Taylor subverts that pattern beautifully as the drug lord explains that he believes we are living in Kali Yuga, or “the end times.”

I’m not sure I’m familiar enough with the Hindu Yugas to properly parse what the character might be saying, but I think it’s brilliant that Taylor foreshadows the order in which these characters will die with that line. That same basic shot opens the scene to establish the interior of the setting, but in breaking it up into three images, we’re forced to consider the isolation of each of these characters (and their perspectives). Those borders become literal as Zero is kicked out of the room, but continue as metaphors for Zizek, who never intends to make good on his deal.

Taylor, I’m totally with you on the way the ocean can symbolize death, but I might quibble with you a bit as to why. For me, it’s that the ocean represents the unknown, both for what lies beneath the waves as well as what lies beyond them. I feel like all of the subterfuge and intrigue of this series (and especially this issue) finds a parallel in the mysteries of what’s going on below the surface, but is tantalizingly cagey about what other lands might be out there. Indeed, that closing triptych of Zizek’s lifeless body seems to assert that there are no lands beyond the sea — an attitude perfectly in keeping with the mood of this series, but one that makes Zero’s actions all the more darkly frank.

So what’s going on there? Is Zero asserting his loyalty to Cooke, or did he simply choose to go rogue at the same time as as Zizek? As usual with this series, we don’t get much in the way of answers. Zizek was in many ways the emotional core of this series, with personal relationships with both Zero and Cooke, so I have no idea what the next issue might even look like. Not that it matters — this series is so consistently good, I’m not sure it requires any expectations in the first place.

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