In this review of Narco #3, Marcus gets caught investigating Jess’s place without permission, and we learn a couple of things about his friend Kase.
Narco #3
Writer: Doug Wagner
Art and Main Cover: Daniel Hillyard
Variant Covers: Daniel Hillyard
Page Count: 32 pages
Release Date: May 20, 2026
This review contains spoilers
So, it turns out Ben hadn’t murdered Jess, after all. Marcus comes to the conclusion that he needs to change his approach, and so breaks into Jess’s apartment to look for clues.
But before he can get too far into that, he’s intercepted by Violet and the stress takes him out again. He wakes up in the interrogation room and tries to explain himself. Dean and Violet have a shouting match before Violet walks off the case.
As Dean and Marcus talk some more, Marcus’s dark web activities via Jess’s wi-fi are brought up.
After he leaves, he spends some time with his friends, talking about the new developments, when Dean turns up again and asks to speak to him alone. He’s done background checks on Marcus’s friends and had dug up a few things about Kase in particular. The big one: texts between Kase and Jess that show that he’d also had feelings for her.
Unable to sleep, Marcus goes to talk to Kase about the texts. Kase said it’d happened a long time prior, and then Marcus asks him about the murder. He gets so stressed about it that he passes out again.
He wakes to see Kase standing over him with a knife, but there’s a perfectly innocent explanation for that: he’s making breakfast. But the damage is still done, and Marcus feels utterly betrayed by his best friend, unsure if he can even trust him anymore.
Somehow, my suspicions about Dean feel a little stronger after Narco #3 ends. While it does stand to reason that he’d know a lot about Marcus’s dark web activities due to that hefty tome known as his FBI file, something about him just makes me wonder. The fact that he’s this friendly toward Marcus isn’t helping matters. There’s a difference between treating a murder suspect like a human being and Dean’s apparent chumminess with Marcus. I’m fully prepared to be wrong, but would also not be too surprised if he had some dark web ties.
Also, those reveals about Kase make me more curious about him. Marcus mentions having been friends since the second grade, and Dean pulls the “used to be a she” card,and then of course, there’s the big one of Marcus finding that he and his best friend were interested in the same girl. When he says how it was a long time ago, I’m curious as to just how long.
The use of Jess’s wi-fi to access the dark web in the first place definitely points to how she ended up on the killer’s radar. Since whoever it was has those ties, and probably killed her to hurt Marcus, there was probably some stalking in the mix.
Narratively, it makes sense that it wasn’t Jess’s ex. He was picked up at the end of issue 2 and seemed the most obvious. With three or four installments left, it wouldn’t be that easy. Nope, they need to draw out the tension for it to be an effective mystery.
Seeing Marcus having issues with his friends is certainly painful, as well. In their scenes so far, they’re shown to be a close group, there to support him. And it’s clearly stressing Marcus the hell out when he confronts Kase near the end. Even as he leaves, his heart monitor’s starting to beep the way it does before he has an episode.
I think a favorite visual element of mine with Narco #3 (really, the title overall) is the way the text is handled just before Marcus has an episode. The dialogue starts to fade right along with him, and it’s just a nice touch. There’s also a really great transition between the interrogation room and when Marcus is with his friends. He retains the same position, roughly the same camera angle, and his dialogue in one panel would not feel out of place with the other.
Final Thoughts
The puzzle of Jess’s murder gains a few new pieces as of Narco #3, and it leaves me eager to get the whole picture. The mystery just gets more and more intriguing, and we’ve got a nice little dramatic twist added to the mix. Bring on the next installment!
