Occult Crimes Taskforce starring Rosario Dawson
Occult Crimes Task Force does star Rosario Dawson, but it’s not a film. Not yet at least. It’s a comic book co-created by the star with the starring character, Sophia Ortiz, modeled after her.
Major spoilers and impressions after the jump…
Sophia Ortiz is a cop. A good one. So good she survives the attack of a very old, very powerful demon as it tries to escape the scene of a crime. But Sophia, coming from the world of rational logic and reality, is confused and understandably scared by what she has encountered.
But since she’s as good a cop as she seems, she’s recruited to a special crimes task force. After an encounter on the way to HQ, she meets her new captain, Deniz Sercan, who heads up the Occult Crimes Taskforce and finds out that only Manhattan has this division of police because the city itself is a Gateway to another realm. Also, her father, who was also a cop and killed in the line of duty, was a member of the same division. So given her new badge which allows her to use magic and her new manual that gives her more knowledge on what it can do, the first issue ends.
Issues two and three have already hit book stands and have been just as good in their artwork and story as the first. Sophia gets thrown into the Soul Ripper case, which is the creature she encountered when she answered that first paranormal call in issue one. And since every encounter with the perpetrator so far has ended with death yet Sophia has survived, chances are he may come looking for her, but she may also have the best shot to survive the next time, too.
Their next encounter doesn’t go well, but no one dies and they save the victim, thanks to backup from an O.C.T. Swat team member who shows up. As he puts it, he’s an undead American and the best suited to fight a Soul Ripper in hand to hand. The victim they save is a woman formerly with the division who worked the Soul Ripper case the first, who also happens to be Sophia’s father’s former partner.
The third issue consists of Sophia doing more investigating and trying to get help from this woman, named Joan Alastor, to learn as much as she can about the Soul Ripper. She relives her father’s last assignment, watching the Soul Ripper murder another victim and presumably end her father’s life minutes before she gets a call from the Lower East Side, a call which, it turns out, comes from her mother’s apartment where the Soul Ripper is looking for her.
After another brief fight and encounter in which the Soul Ripper escapes, Sophia learns that her mother is safe - Joan got her out. The book ends with Sophia agreeing to work with Joan to do whatever it takes to take the Soul Ripper down once and for all.
O.C.T. is a good miniseries; there is already discussion about it being made into a feature length film starring Rosario as the character modeled after her. This both excites and disappoints me: while I think it will make a fantastic movie, I also think it would be much better suited to a weekly TV format, with a her as the new cop investigating paranormal crimes with NY as the backdrop. It seems like it has a lot more than a one-time movie deal to stand on. But I guess I can hope for future miniseries of the title in comic form after this one wraps.
Go find this book at your LCS, pick it up and let your friends know how much you like it too. I want to see a movie version of it and I most definitely want to see more of the character Sophia Ortiz. Final review of the series coming next month when the last issue drops. And go here to see an interview with Rosario Dawson about the series.
