Cyberforce Vol. 4 # 1
By Jake Estrada
The description of the book reads:
TOP COW’S TOP-SELLING SERIES RETURNS IN A GROUND-BREAKING WAY !
Top Cow celebrates its 20th anniversary with the return of
the series that started it all: CYBER FORCE! Top Cow founder MARC SILVESTRI
(THE DARKNESS, INCREDIBLE HULK) returns to his first Image series as co-writer,
art director and cover artist!
Co-writer MATT HAWKINS (THINK TANK, LADY PENDRAGON) and
artist KHOI PHAM (MIGHTY AVENGERS, DAREDEVIL) join SILVESTRI to bring you a
contemporary re-imagining rooted in cutting edge, real world technology.
Carin Taylor , codenamed
Velocity, has escaped from the CDI-controlled
Millennium City
Not content in pushing the envelope just in terms of story
and art, Top Cow will be the first major US comic publisher to launch one of
their biggest properties with top tier creators concurrently for both the
traditional print market and exploding worldwide digital market for FREE.
That’s right: Thanks to the support of fans through Kickstarter and
participating comic shops, you can get the first FIVE issues of CYBER FORCE at
no
Cost.
I will be
rating the elements of the book on a scale of one through five.
One is poor,
two is mediocre, three is fair, four is good, and five is excellent.
My thoughts
The comic was free, I picked up three copies, give one to my
son and the other to my daughter. They both read the comic and they enjoyed it.
So I guess it worked in that level for a new reader that has never picked up a
copy to learn about this new Cyberforce.
Quite honestly I felt like I was reading a remake of the
original Cyberforce I read two decades back. When I see the new Velocity running
I yawned in boredom. The story felt very padded, as it hit the key notes on
what level and model each of these characters were in whatever particular
series which I felt odd. It went by the numbers, had Shoc troops after Velocity
and all I could do was like wow. This is almost a remake, sure they made it out
to be more realistic they said, but that wasn’t even the case. It felt more
like they were in the far future and I was watching some weird play reenact the
old comic I had already read. The biggest change was that the characters seemed
to be all artificial life forms now? I know they had cybernetic extensions in
the past, but this time they took it further? I guess we will learn more about
this in the future? I don’t know. What we got are a bunch a disgruntle robots
that lived in the tunnels and sewers like they were secretly trying to find the
secret of the ooze, as freaking depressed vagabonds.
The Art
The art was kind of weird; it had a very anime feel to a
realistic look. It had Khoi Pham on pencils and a longtime name I had not seen
in forever was Sal Regla on inks. I almost fell out when I saw Sal’s name.
Finally there were artistic finishes by Stjepan Sejlc providing Final Art
Polish. I don’t know what they meant about that but hey that was the team on
the art. Finally this was all under the direction of Marc Silvestri.
Now the art was one thing I would say that it felt like I
said at times very cartoony then it bounced over to this realistic look so I
don’t know, but it had the typical Top Cow flavor of yesterday. Honestly, I
hadn’t picked up a Top Cow comic in many years personally, and all I could
think about was where was Stryker and when was he going to grace our pages. I
know that the characters we had were many of the previous team members but they
were drastically different in appearance and in some ways looked more deformed,
and down right homeless. I don’t get this trend lately to make characters living
breathing hobos. I guess it takes a great homeless person to rise above their
issues to become a hero? I don’t know but this is a disturbing trend almost I
swear. Hey lets take a character and make them look like hobos because we all
understand the underdog a broke down poor person that can’t afford a proper
appearance. Marc if you are reading this, why hose why?
ART 3
The writing
The writing what can I say they recycled the original plot,
but of course they changed it up some but this was a more modern retelling of an
ancient IMAGE title.
So we have Velocity running around the city doing her thing,
she has her wolf dispatch of some of the Shoc Troops and she finally comes into
meeting the man with the claws that we all used to love but finally remembered
he was a Wolverine ripoff, Ripclaw. He leads Velocity to the others, and here
is where it gets funny. First most of the male characters have hoods and robes
on, but when they finally start to talk they remove their robes slowly as if
they are prepping to get down and frisky with the latest female in the room. In
fact this made me feel like I was watching a porno and I thought what the heck
was Matt Hawkins thinking when he wrote this story, along with Marc Silvestri.
I was totally taken back here for a second and laughing very hard.
Somewhere in the story we have Cyblade bust out in the story
telling Ripclaw that they needed Serum, and they could use Velocity as leverage
since they were rogue robots in heat. I was like Serum, so now they are drug
users as well. Damn I thought are these damn time has been bad on Cyberforce.
The story goes through its ticks, it introduces us to
several of the characters, the villains but it leaves out Morgan Stryker, so we
are totally clueless on how he looks like here. However, at the end of the book
all of the members of Cyberforce were left dead. So the mystery thickens. Did they die? Did
they go apeshit and try to kill Velocity in a heated sexual encounter and were
all left dead and only Ripclaw won? I mean this dude was always badass, since
he was a cool rip-off.
Damn Velocity, LOOK what you made Ripclaw do for your booty?
Marc, why did you do this?
I about lost it in the end if I had bought this book I don’t
know if I would ever pick up the second issue, but seeing as it is free I will
check out the second issue for sure.
WRITING 2
Originality
I would say it wasn’t very original. Most people know this
title, to the new reader they are giving a set of weird characters and I don’t know
if they would be interested enough to pick up a second issue or care? I think
we needed more punch for the story or a clearer story and not such a muddled
mess. The story was all over and not quite sure what is going on nor did I care
about all this corporate talk. I do wish they didn’t look like bums, and only
wished they had more of a heroic appearance, but these days the lines aren’t as
clear that the heroes are or who are the villains.
Originality 2
General overview
Cyberforce is back kiddies. These aren’t your quit clean cut
heroes of yesterday, now we got a new grunge group of dirty nomads ready to
fight against the evils of the world, but not before they get some hot tail. That
is why the Shoc troops were after Velocity, she had no chance until Ripclaw
found her and showed her off to his friends. Yet she was to busy screaming for
Morgan Stryker. Hell I guess a man with four arms is hot!!
I think out of interest people should pick it up. It has a
lot of different concepts; it and maybe it will come together in the next few
issues. Heck it is free, and it is more reason to pick it up. Don’t lie free is
good and sometimes, you can still have fun if you have a twisted mind like I
do.
I do hope we get more crazy hot moments with Velocity soon.
;)
Where to pick it up
You can pick up the comic at your local comic shop retail
shop, or you can hope over to Drivethru comics and get a copy as well, along
with other digital download places. This download also includes a copy of the
Darkness 101 so you get two issues for free, take advantage of it folks it is a
steal.
Enjoy!
Jake Estrada
