Mr. Vertigo

The One Hand & The Six Fingers
Ram V, writer (The One Hand); Laurence Campbell, artist (The One Hand); Dan Watters, writer (The Six Fingers); Sumit Kumar, artist (The Six Fingers); Lee Loughridge, colorist; Aditya Bidikar, letterer; Tom Muller, designer
Image Comics, 2024

This collection brings together two five-issue miniseries: The One Hand (Image Comics, 2024) and The Six Fingers (Image Comics, 2024). The two comics effectively form an interlocking narrative of the same series of events, and were always intended to be read as alternating chapters.

The One Hand tells the story from the perspective of Ari Nasser, a veteran homicide detective in the city of Neo Novena. It is November, 2873, and Neo Novena is a gritty futuristic city in the mold of the film Blade Runner. Nasser is about to retire–he is literally attending his retirement party–when he receives the news that the infamous One Hand Killer has struck again. Nasser is famous for catching this serial killer twice before, so naturally he insists on staying with the case, postponing his retirement.

The protagonist in The Six Fingers is archaelogy student Johannes Vale. Exposure to a radioactive element on the job caused a mutation: an embryonic sixth finger. And when he commits a brutal murder using the M.O. of a historic and notorious serial killer, he does not remember doing it. But the bloody handprint he leaves behind (a hallmark of these murders) shows the beginning of that sixth finger, along with a series of bloody symbols on the wall.

Nasser reveals the fact that those symbols were never made public. The bloody handprint might be obvious to any copycat, but the symbols could not be. So how does the third One Hand Killer know about them? It is a mystery both men want to solve, making them unlikely allies in a way. But the mysteries keep piling up, including possible Cog involvement (Cogs are androids that look human, another Blade Runner connection) and secret passages that run behind the walls in the entire city (one of the characters asks “Is this whole damn city hollow?”). A victim says “The right hand cannot know what the left hand is doing,” and Vale tells Nasser that he is “the other hand,” and that the bloody symbols on the wall are a language. It all leads to a Matrix-like conclusion which I will not spoil.

Each of the miniseries credit both writers as creators, along with the respective artists. The stories are so intertwined that it is obvious that both writers were involved in the plotting. The artists each employed a similar realistic style, rich in characterization, shadows, and moody lighting. No doubt having a single colorist and letterer for both series contributed to the unified effect. Taken as a whole the story is remarkeably unified, and the decision to publish it in alternating chapters feels absolutely right.