 |
| MICRONAUTS No. 1, April 2016 |
Penned by self-confessed Micronauts toy lover Cullen Bunn
and apparently destined to be a book which “will feature lots of space-faring
action” in its depiction of “an epic… civil war and cosmic weirdness, magic and
super-science”, this opening instalment of ‘Editornaut’ John Barber’s “journey
through Microspace” would clearly appear to have been a labour of love for its
creative team considering the narrative’s prominent inclusion of Baron Karza,
Acroyear, Biotron and Microtron. Yet whilst the GLAAD Media Award-winner’s
script undoubtedly caters for “old school Micronauts fans”, courtesy of its wide-ranging
representation of both “ruthless side(s) of a civil war ravaging the universe”,
it seems disappointingly debatable whether many of this twenty-four page
periodical’s 25,673 readers actually had much of an idea as to what the “small
band of renegades” were genuinely up to.
Admittedly, the North Carolina-born writer’s basic plot simply
revolves around an attempt by Oziron Rael to “slip past the blockade (of Baron
Karza) and liberate the meds” for “systems that need that medicine – badly.”
But such a straightforward mission is severely over-complicated by a couple of dialogue-rich
interludes concerning the approach of a mysterious “entropic wave" towards the planet
Saqqura, and the political manoeuvrings of Homeworld’s former chief scientist and
his calculating wife Shazraella on board a Ministry of Defense Outpost skirting
the entropy cloud perimeter.
Such mystifying machinations aside however, once Bunn has
the Heliopolis deftly deposit Pharoid, Acroyear, Space Glider and Orbital
Defender deep inside the Valtricos Research Station using warp tech, the storyline’s
action finally heats up by portraying the team’s genetically engineered super-warrior savagely
hacking his way through a corridor crammed full of well-armed war-bots with his
energy sword; “Here they come. Take cover if you can find it. I’ll hold them
off.” Indeed, the subsequent firefight between Oz, Larissa and Phenolo-Phi and
the medical facility’s dome-headed sentries is as pulse-pounding as its laser
beams are colourful.
Perhaps somewhat contentiously however, David Baldeon’s artwork
for this ‘wild adventure’ is arguably a little too sharp for a comic book, with
its disconcerting panels depicting the “roguish space pirate” blasting his
way to relative safety unnervingly appearing to have been directly ‘lifted’
from an animation celluloid. It’s certainly clear why "barely taller than his Biotron toy" Bunn has “been a fan of
David’s work for some time” and “tried to wrangle him into working with me on more
than one occasion in the past.”
 |
| The regular cover art of "MICRONAUTS" No. 1 by J.H. Williams III |
No comments:
Post a Comment