The Tourist

by Brian Wood, Toby Cypress (Illustrator)

In a remote coastal village in Northern Scotland, the choice between money and happiness has never been clearer or carried such deadly consequences. When Moss arrives, he is accepted as what he appears to be: a somewhat grubby American backpacker on holiday. Gradually the town begins to realize just who it is they're harboring: a Special Forces soldier turned drugs smuggler. If that wasn't bad enough, he has a lot of really rough bastards riding into town after him. The safety of the town and the woman he loves vs. the successful conclusion of a very lucrative drug deal... which will Moss choose?

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Graphic Novels Comics, Fiction, Crime

104 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2005

About the author

Brian Wood's history of published work includes over fifty volumes of genre-spanning original material.

From the 1500-page future war epic DMZ, the ecological disaster series The Massive, the American crime drama Briggs Land, and the groundbreaking lo-fi dystopia Channel Zero he has a 20-year track record of marrying thoughtful world-building and political commentary with compelling and diverse characters.

His YA novels - Demo, Local, The New York Four, and Mara - have made YALSA and New York Public Library best-of lists. His historical fiction - the viking series Northlanders, the American Revolution-centered Rebels, and the norse-samurai mashup Sword Daughter - are benchmarks in the comic book industry.

He's written some of the biggest franchises in pop culture, including Star Wars, Terminator, RoboCop, Conan The Barbarian, Robotech, and Planet Of The Apes. He’s written number-one-selling series for Marvel Comics. And he’s created and written multiple canonical stories for the Aliens universe, including the Zula Hendricks character.

Reviews

[Juho Pohjalainen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pretty short and bare-bones on its own, and doesn't even end properly. Skip.

[Lauren Salisbury · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh. This was less than enjoyable. I would not recommend it to anyone. The plot was not anything special. That being said sometime the art makes up for the plot, but the black and white simplicity that could have been great with a substantial plot, was not enough.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

The B&W art and sloppy style gets old quickly, and the leads motivation is - - not exactly believable?

[Damon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh. Not too good. The story really goes nowhere, and is so abbreviated as to not make a lot of sense, relying heavily on how trite and familiar it is to allow readers to fill in the missing details themselves. Also, it's hard to relate too much to the main guy, who is clearly shown to be a terrible person, even though he really likes his girlfriend of a few days.

Toby Cypress is a new favorite of mine, though, and his artwork IS pretty nice here, though I think he really benefits from color.

But most annoying - doesn't anyone have editors, or even proofreaders anymore?!?! Come on, the plural of fox is FOXES, and mosquito only has 1 T, and both those errors are in the same sentence!! Ridiculous. People pay money for this stuff, it shouldn't have freakin' typos or spelling and grammar errors in it.

[Chris Boette · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story started out with enough intrigue and character chemistry to keep me interested. As it went along, though, the holes became more apparent. Motivations were one-dimensional, if they even existed. Characters became plot objects. Even toward the end, the art lost detail and even felt rushed, to the point where objects were missing.

This story would have benefitted from another issue, at least. How it reads as is, it feels like the climax and denouement were omitted completely.

And, as a small annoyance, Moss describes himself as having gone through SEAL training while in the Army, but it is only the Navy that conducts that training. A distracting detail that could have easily been resolved with a moment of research.

[Bill Coffin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sloppy and slapdash, this tale of a scoundrel on the run in northern Scotland had some interesting elements to it, but it was all too quickly shoehorned in to make a lot of sense, or to grab our attention. The ending simply makes no sense, and the art is quite crude and unpleasant. Not a lot to recommend here.

[47Time · Rating 3 out of 5]

The artwork isn't much to look at, but the mystery behind the story carries it forward. I bet this would make a cool movie.

Moss is a special agent who travels to a small town in Scotland for an undisclosed mission. He meets a girl, gets a job and just tries to fit in, though the locals don't take kindly to him. Pretty soon some men from his past try to gun him down, but his training proves a match for them. Julie stops trusting him after that, but he is determined to protect her and her daughter Samantha.

In reality Moss is awol and his mission is to hide drugs until he can sell them later on. The men after him want the drugs back. They beat him up and throw him in the ocean. He works this into his plan - he recovers the drugs and meets his contact Connor. Even thoigh he is in the clear, he returns to the small tin. He doesn't want to leave Julie and Samantha behind.

[Chris Schneider · Rating 2 out of 5]

Definitely written by men. Rugged mysterious man comes to town, immediately starts sleeping with a hot woman, beats up people, blah blah blah.

What is really bizarre about this book is its strange sense of morality. The main character is AWOL from the military so he can steal and sell drugs in the US. He kills one innocent guy who might blow his cover, no big deal. The woman and her daughter, of course, start to fall in love with him, and so somehow we are supposed to cheer for their success. Somehow we are supposed to read the main character as a manly tough guy just trying to make his way instead of a complete dishonorable lowlife deserving of the death penalty for murder.

Dial back the testosterone, Wood. You have let it take over.

[Krishnakumar Mohanasundaram · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one shot follows a runaway from the military as stumbles on a northern coastal town, takes up a job at the oil rig and starts dating a local widow with a son.

Not many of them know that there are people following him to take back the things he has looted from them and make him an example to other Runaways.

Pretty decent readand good artwork!

[Sam Morley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short but pleasant. Sometimes hard to follow. Being close to Scotland I found the storyline quite gripping. All in all a decent read

[Kris Kaleta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Readable. Would do a really fun movie/short series.

[Franco Olcese · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok, i didn't consider this graphic novel an outstanding work, especially with the plot. This is the first story i read written by Brain Wood, i have to say i am deceived. The story was predictable and to so good. However i love the drawing. He has a style i enjoy a lot; and i can consider "The Tourist" another reason to reinforce graphic novel as nice format for me: I had wouldn't enjoy this piece of art on any other format.

[Rahadyan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pre-DMZ graphic novel by Brian Wood, illustrated by Toby Cypress, about an American backpacker in a coastal Scotland village. Or so he seems... I couldn't quite get into it, in contrast to DMZ, and I suspect that's because DMZ is set in my home town of New York City. Potentially an enjoyable plot for a film.

[Lionel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Brian Wood deceived me... Well I didn't see it coming. The plot isn't really interesting (and I still don't know how they did it), I don't like the art, it isn't beautiful drawings... And I don't have anything really positive about it.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this one. Aside from what I've written before about him, he alway's picks interesting artists to pair up with. Very different stylistically from one book to the next.

[Matt Piechocinski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good thriller. It is what it is.