Published by Image Comics
Slugline: In media res of the future still proves that no one understands Latin
I usually do not review single issues, but the creators of this title were looking for reviews from manga sites, and there is a manga in the title here. Hopefully they won't come to regret their decision too greatly.
StrongArm is by western creators, and falls into the Guyver genre of anime/manga: hapless guy gets possessed by the ultimate weapon that takes him over and he struggles to control himself. Or at least that is what I think the story is about, since there is very little of it explained here, thus the In Media Res joke in the slugline. You are very much dropped into the story, and while you can follow it, exactly what the characters are doing, why you should care, and what else is going on in the world around them, is lacking. These are not insurmountable problems, but if you don't give a reader some idea of what is going on in the first issue, when you are going to? The main character, Rob, prisoner/bearer of the StrongArm, is barely given a chance to sketched out.
The art is very nice, clean, with good tones, but I would have given up some of those nice looking splash pages to be further drawn into the world and the characters. This is an average title, one that most manga readers would recognize, the one weakness of the story being that the background and characters are not fully fleshed out. But that is something that could easily be fixed in a following issue.
Visit Image Comics to find out more about the title and local comic book stores. To find one, try the Comic Shop Locator Service.
- Ferdinand
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