Welcome to another month of Random Read. I thought that this month instead of doing something that was new from the previous month of 2012, I would step into the wayback machine and give my thoughts on a comic that came out June 1992. I pulled it from the dime boxes of comics at May's Dallas Comic-Con. You can find some real jewels in those boxes if you have the time and patience to go through them. They may not be in the best condition, but are still plenty readable. This month, I thought I would start with a issue number one of an early Image comic. Image is celebrating twenty years of making comics and finding some of their work in the dime box was just too good to pass up. I've got no love for early Image comics. Some of the companies newer stuff I like (except Walking Dead) and I thought I would see if my venom for their early stuff still holds true; or was I just letting the stresses of being in high school at the time get to me and I was just taking it out on the work of this company. Without blah blahing any longer I give you my review of: Cyber Force #1

The Cover

Let's judge a book by its cover. As far as I know, the book only had one cover, this one and that is all. These days most books at least have one alternate cover and the alternate cover trend did start back in the 1990's, but I guess this was too early for that. The cover art was done by Mark Silverstri and shows the team standing back to back in a sort of protective circle weapons at the ready. Some of them seem to be gritting their teeth for some reason and that makes them look like they are trying to force out a bowel movement and having very little success. The colors on the cover are done very well for a book that was put out in 1992 and did not have the benefit of computer coloring. I would hold it up as an example of what a good colorist can do without a computer. The whole palate they chose though does make it look like the whole book is going to be based on a cartoon rather than being a comic book.

The Book Itself

The book starts off with some military type organization going after a "mutant" trying to capture her. She is being watched over from the roofs of the city by a character named Ripclaw. They close in on her before she is rescued by Ripclaw and another member of Cyber Force who can shoot plasma. At a fancy banquet for a politician we also have another character that has four arms, three on the right side and one on the left acting as a bodyguard to a blue skinned "mutant" politician who looks a lot like a taller Nightcrawler from the X-Men. There is an assassination attempt made on the politician and then all heck breaks loose and another assassin is stopped in the stairwell as he is trying to escape by the only female member of the team who basically turns his mind to mush. The get away car is stopped by the last member of the team who is a giant hulk type character. Back at the team's headquarters the female mutant that was being chased is having a nightmare about her past before she wakes up and finds she is safe. She is introduced to the human members of the team that are mostly ground crew taking care of things for their plane. There is some kind of creepy android kid who gets along with the girl. At the end of the issue, we see their safe house raided by the same strike force that was trying to capture the girl early on.

Overall Impressions

Writing:The book itself is standard 1992 comic book fare. Written by Marc Silvestri who also does the art on the book, it starts off with action but very little "get to know your characters" other than a name and what they look like. This is kind of troubling considering that the book was the first issue in a four issue limited series. I would like to know more about these characters that could be introduced in the first issue. About the only one who has any characterization is Ripclaw and then the only thing we know about him is that he is Native American and was tailing the mutant girl for a while and saves her. Art: The cover and interior art were done by Marc Silvestri and it is your standard starting Image Comics fare. Lots of gnashed teeth and stuff blowing and flowing around that moves the characters hair and other flowing parts from their costumes when there was no reason for it to be blowing around. He makes some curious choices on panel lay out. For example he has one large panel span two pages while the smaller panels are spread out over one page in left to right order and on the other page in left to right order without doing the same sort of bridging on the smaller panels it got kind of confusing because I was thinking of reading left to right across the pages like you think you would with the big panel spanning two pages. Also there is a lack of gutters between the panels like you have in the comics that I grew up with. For those of you not in the know, the gutter is the line of white space that is between panels in comic books. They are not used so much any more in new comics, but it took place a lot in the books of the 1960's through the end of the 1980's. Colors and Letters: For the colors, the color selection and blending were good, but the whole thing seems kind of dark. There is the effect in the coloring of some of the cyborg parts that makes them look metallic, but not like super shiny chrome. As for the lettering, the caption boxes are a bit small and the font used in them was even smaller. I'm sure back when this was published I could have read them rather easily, but now with my 35 year old eyes they seem a bit small. Random Stuff: There is a big two page spread for a Batman versus Joker video game for the Super Nintendo right in the middle of the book. Looking at that advertisement made me feel really old. You would never see an advertisement for another company's character in a different company's book in this day and age, but back then I guess they could not afford to be picky about their advertisers. Not a lot of advertising in the book in general so you got your $1.95 worth of story and art.

Final Thoughts

Looking back at the start of one of Image Comic's flagship titles of the 1990's my venom for them was not justified. It was not written on the level of any modern writer, but Silvestri got down what he wanted and left us in a cliffhanger. It was not enough of a cliffhanger though to make me go out and track down the rest of the limited series as back issues. I think it could have used a bit more characterization rather than just here's a bunch of cool characters, look at them they are cool. This guy has four arms and one is a woman just so we can have gender equality. What's up for next month? Come back and find out.

[Back to Collector Times]

[Prev.]

[Return to Comics]

[Disclaimer]

[Next]

Copyright © 2012 Mathew "thehammer" Bredfeldt About the Author