Lady Mechanika #2 – Review

By: Joe Benitez (writer & artist), Peter Steigerwald (colors) & Josh Reed (letters)

The Story: The beautiful steampunk android Lady Mechanika continues to explore her origins while being pursued by mysterious forces.

What’s Good: This can be a pretty fast review because the highs and lows of this issue are pretty glaring. The art is the reason to buy this comic.  Joe Benitez has really got his style figured out and his linework is gorgeous.  His Mechanika is just stunningly well drawn.  The style he is using is very reminiscent of what Michael Turner used to do on Fathom, so if you liked that, you should love this.  Everything is nicely proportioned and while he takes a few liberties with anatomy, the muscle groups are all there where they should be.  He’s showing a really high level of detail on his inks too.  And, Steigerwald is doing a great job with the colors too.  This issue is a visual treat.

And, the overall story is pretty neat too.  In a way, it kinda reminds me of a steampunk Fathom– sexy heroine, mysterious origin, ominous forces after her, possible larger agendas at play…  There really isn’t enough steampunk in the world of comics, so this is a very welcome addition.
What’s not so good: Holy crap is this comic wordy!  Sometimes wordiness comes from having lots of exposition and there is some of that, but most of the verbosity comes from just plain old excessive talking.  In some ways it is a little funny because this is how characters would talk to each other in the real world, but in the context of a comic book, it is just way, way, way too much verbiage.  On some pages, the letterer did yeoman’s work to not cover up Benitez’s lovely art with all the word balloons.

Carbon Grey #3 – Advanced Review

By: Houng Nguyen, Khari Evans, Paul Gardner, Mike Kennedy (story), Paul Gardner (script and lettering), Khari Evans, Kinsun Loh, Hoang Nguyen (art)

The Story: Life is pretty crappy all around for the four special sisters who are the elite enforcers of a Reich-like empire. The Kaiser is killed on their watch, enemies encircle, and the four girls are hunted, even those who had no involvement.

The Review: Welcome to the third installment of this Prussian steampunk masterwork. In it, you’ll find absolutely stunning art and a complex, multi-layered political espionage plot filled with ninja-styled action in a Kaiser Wilhelm setting. The images are truly arresting, from the leaning, half-destroyed iron and steel tower, steel-gray against a slate sky, to blazing gunfights, plane crashes, moody colored flashbacks, secret missions and scarred hunters. Really, there is no way for me to effectively describe this art other than to say it is fabulous. The emotiveness in the expressions are some of the best I’ve seen in two years of reviewing comics, well on par with Cascioli’s stuff, but here shown with a simultaneously shinier and grittier sensibility.

Split evenly between writing and drawing, Carbon Grey takes advantage of the flexibility of the laws of physics in the comics medium. This leads to some eye-popping visuals, but that are wholly dramatic in their impact and hovering between ironic and surreal in their tone. I’m talking about riding a flaming aircraft like a weaponized surfboard, wielding a sword that cuts like a lightsaber, and the kind of samurai-like self-possession it takes to do both at the same time.

Lady Mechanika #1 – Review

By: Joe Benitez (writer and artist), Peter Steigerwald (colors), John Reed (letters) & Vince Hernandez (editor)

The Story: We are introduced to Lady Mechanika, a half-human, half-mechanical woman who is trying to learn about her past.

What’s Good: This issue was really good all over.  The story mostly just lays the groundwork.  We are introduced to Mechanika: The City of Tomorrow.  Mechanika is kind of a steam-punk metropolis in Britain during the late 1800’s.  I guess the story said it was in the “British Commonwealth”, but that is picking nits.  We pick up the story by seeing a teenage girl who is half-human/half-mechanical running from some goons who work for a nefarious (and nameless) overboss.  She gets away and finds her way to Mechanika where we meet Lady Mechanika herself.  Lady Mechanika is a kind of noir-ish adventure heroine who is half-mechanical herself.  Although she goes on adventures to kill werewolves and the like, she is mostly driven to find out who made her the way she is and why.  Naturally, this will bring her into conflict with the nameless overboss, but that will be a story for a later issue.

Benitez walks the tightrope of giving us just enough information to keep the issue interesting while not telling us the whole story and he does it well.  There is a lot of mystery here and you want to learn more, not only about the Lady, but about the world she lives in.

Lady Mechanika #0 – Review

By: Joe Benitez (creator, writer & art), Peter Steigerwald (colors) & Josh Reed (letters)

The Story: In a steampunky world, a mysterious & lovely mercenary comes to the aid of a half-mechanical monster.

What’s Good: The big attraction on this title is Joe Benitez’s art.  If you see the image on the cover and like that, you’ll probably like this book because that is pretty much what you get.  Everything is just very highly detailed: the guns have all these steam-punky hoop-a-joops all over them, belts are covered with detailed pouches, shirts have intricate buckles (the better to allow bosoms to heave) and goggles have individual little screws.  As we know, even with a high level of detail on the characters, art can sometimes run amok, but Benitez also does many things with unique panel layouts and backgrounds (or lack thereof) to help tell the story.  The color palate is very muted (mostly shades of gray), but that makes Lady Mechanika’s red eyes really stand out.  More comics go for that “stark red in a field of gray” look than actually pull it off, but it works nicely here.