Marvel’s Mosaic, written by Geoffrey Thorne, reads like a story we’ve seen in rap & sports mythology many times. There’s a man on top that seems invincible. His level of talent is unmatched. He is a man amongst boys, enacting his will with zero opposition. But then tragedy strikes. Horrible injury, a mistake made off the court, etc — something weighs them down. In this case, it’s a terrigen mist that forms a cocoon around our protagonist Morris Sackett. That’s where things begin to get interesting.

“They gon’ leave you when you’re down not when you’re up.”

In the words of Soundcloud phenom Nav, Morris can’t get any love. His new form is scary. In fact, it’s his girlfriend that does him dirty first. Hasn’t she ever heard that loyalty is royalty? Anyway, she lights our boy up with some kind of taser.

But luckily for us, that’s when we get to see Mosaic’s power for the first time. He’s a body jumper. Mosaic can inhabit a host, learn and retain everything they know and jump to the next. We soon find out that he can even do it just by looking at you — that’s honestly maybe the coolest superpower I’ve seen in a minute. One thing we haven’t figured out yet is how Morris can extract himself from a body without jumping into another. The ending will leave you really wondering just how connected our boy really is to his host when he’s on the inside.

Khary Randolph absolute kills the art in this. Also, big shout out to the colorist Emilio Lopez. There’s a really strong sense of style identified in this debut issue, and I’m excited to see where this goes. Look people, I see the comments. The call for an original black character, not tied to any other franchise has been loud and clear — and here he is, in the flesh, with 29 pages of origin story goodness. If you don’t go out and support this book, you’ve been wasting your breath all this time.

Go pick up Mosaic #1 at your local comic book shop or online.

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Mosaic

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