Pop Kill

Set in a literal cola war, this laddish corporate-espionage thriller from writers Johnson (Superman: Red Son) and Palmiotti (the Harley Quinn series) and artist Santacruz (Cell Block Earth) revels in execution-style shootings and pinup-style nudity. In a soulless corporate near future, a battle unfolds between Osaka’s Popso Furious and Fizz-One sodas, which are helmed by previously conjoined twin brothers. Jon Pyle’s a glib killer working off a debt to Fizz One’s cola-garch. In the opening pages, he gets woken up from beneath a pile of naked women by one of a set of twin sisters who are assigned to escort him on his next assignment. After his résumé of international assassinations in the name of the soda biz is recapped in quick, quippy scenes (“I made a silencer out of a cola can. Cool, right?”), the mission gets underway. At times, the wordy script crowds the panels, though the familiar dueling warlords plot offers Santacruz opportunity to wild out with knife duels, car chases, brothel showdowns, and the inevitable kidnapping of Jon’s love interest: the Popso scientist behind an amusingly mundane yet game-changing cola innovation supposedly worth billions. It’s all so over-the-top that it vaults past satire and into absurdity. There’s fizz in this giddy nihilism, but nobody would claim it’s good for them. (Aug.)