Comics: She's in My Head
by Dee. 6/3/2022
Greetings fellow travelers: This glorious month brings new comics, so here we go! From Image Comics, Metal Society, from DC Comics Duo, and from Marvel Comics Marvel's Voices: Identity.Metal Society (Image Comics): It's the year 2420, and we've got a slugfest: robots vs. humans. The cool thing about the opening scene is how much it sets up the background and environment. Humans have only been on the earth for a decade as robots have decided they are worth bringing back. Surprising no one, humans had screwed up Earth pretty badly for the robots to rise up and take over. Humans have a council, but are limited in their roles and what is considered efficient to the robots, so the atmosphere is stifling and tense.
The art is amazingly detailed, and the overall feel of the series is somewhere between the anime Metropolis and Ghost in the Shell. It's a futuristic, sprawling urban environment with a group of humans fighting for their humanity. The palette changes between a Matrix-like green-tinged technology and warm peachy and red tones for the more human moments. This is a series that I will be following.
Duo (DC Comics): Speaking of the marvels of technology, we have a story of nanobots and identity. Our main heroes Kelly Vu and David Kim are engaged to be married, and already have a strong emotional and mental bond. So when their nanobots are called upon to save their lives, some wacky stuff happens. This creates Duo, and this six-issue mini-series hits the ground running. The villains have an interesting character design, and the thuggish monsters are also intriguing. These are actually new characters within the Earth-M environment, and the last page hints at the larger mythology of the "Milestone 2.0" universe.
The art has intense reds during the action sequences, and makes good use of the various shadows and highlights. The nanobots are actually a yellow color, rather than the trope-y silver or blue that people might expect.
Marvel's Voices: Identity (2022) (Marvel Comics): This is a collection of stories from top talent with the focus on more Asian American Pacific Islander voices: Shang-Chi, Jubilee, Jimmy Woo (SHIELD agent turned FBI honcho extraordinaire), Wave (from the X-Men), Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan) and Amadeus Cho (The Hulk) and Silk for instance. These one-shot stories will whet the appetites of anyone looking to break into the Marvel Universe. The art styles are different enough from one story to the next, as the artistic team changes, but it's not distracting from the stories. The story which has a more anime/ cutesy feel to it is very light-hearted, so the style matches the tone of the comic.
The colors match the tone of the comic well, and the shadows are balanced with the highlights so that things don't appear too shiny or too obscured. Overall, I was very excited to jump into this issue. That should wrap things up for this month.
Fare thee well,
Dee