Review of "Jumper: Jumpscars," by Nunzio Defilppis & Christina Weir

Review of

Jumper: Jumpscars, by Nunzio Defilppis & Christina Weir ISBN 9781932664935


Five out of five stars

 The premise of this graphic novel is that there is a small number of humans that are capable of teleportation. They are called jumpers and considered pariahs, there is a powerful police force, the members are called Paladins, dedicated to eradicated them. Members of the force are licensed to use deadly force against them at any time. This is necessary, as they can easily escape by simply “jumping” from their current location. This power tends to manifest itself at an early age, so members of the force must be hardened so that they do not hesitate to kill jumpers that are children.

“Jessica” is a young female Paladin and with her mentor she is on the trail of a jumper that appears to live in an apartment building. To maintain her cover, she rents an apartment from the attractive building manager that is an aspiring artist. He fills the role of building manager in order to make ends meet.

 Keeping a close eye in order to spot anything unusual, Jessica begins to suspect a young boy that has a single parent father and somehow manages to acquire unusual toys that ordinarily would require a trip to a foreign country. As things move along, there is a budding romance between Jessica and the apartment manager.

 Never losing sight of what her mission is, Jessica must subvert her feelings and uncertainty in tracking down the true jumper. One fundamental problem is that the paladins are given great flexibility in their work, collateral deaths are not considered a major failure in the quest to terminate a jumper.

 This is a great graphic novel, because Jessica struggles with her feelings as she tries to carry out the duties her society has assigned her. The consensus is that all jumpers must be killed as quickly as possible using whatever means that are necessary. This requires the paladin to suppress all normal human feelings towards the human jumpers, not at easy thing to do because the jumpers are otherwise human in all other respects.