The fine print may be killer with this device.
Creative Staff:
Story: Aaron Lopresti
Art: Aaron Lopresti
Colors: Hi-Fi Design
What They Say:
What if you had a piece of technology that created anything you could possibly want, and all you had to do was imagine it? What would you wish for? For Kenny Logan, his first wish is to survive his eighteenth birthday! His unique matter-reinterpreting device has attracted the attention of a bumbling Nazi scientist with plans for world domination and an elite government agent who is hell bent on acquiring the device to stop an alien invasion at any cost. Aaron Lopresti delivers a comical coming-of-age tale in a fantastic sci-fi universe!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While familiar with Aaron Lopresti through a number of works, this is the first one that I can recall where it’s essentially his baby from top to bottom that I’ve read. Power Cubed is a new miniseries from Dark Horse Comics that has the creator queuing up a few issues in order to showcase the creativity that he has when not playing in other company’s usual playground of characters. That can be pretty liberating in a lot of ways but it also ups the pressure. For the reader, the big plus is that more often than not we get some sort of passion project that they put together and that has its own energy about it that can make it pretty damn engaging. Power Cubed starts off with some rather interesting ideas, though I suspect that it’s one that will work better for some readers when read in full.
The book revolves around Kenny Logan, an eighteen-year-old young man that’s looking forward to getting on with his adult life. A lot of that stems from the difficult relationship he has with his father, made worse over the years by the loss of his mother. As is the case with a lot of father/son relationships, there’s a strain there because they’re too alike and just rub each other the wrong way. Kenny’s intent is to just get out of the house as soon as he can, get a job and move on with everything. He does get some pushback from what seems to be his girlfriend, or at least a long time friend that’s a girl, who reminds him that he’ll get further finishing school and sticking out some of the hardships. We don’t really get to see the hardships that the father/son have, but we do get to see that they have a difficult time talking to each other.
What sets things in motion here behind the scenes is a kind of weird and off-kilter Nazi scientist named Doctor Cruel that’s searching for a device, a device that Kenny’s father has. It’s of alien origin and Kenny’s father is just now giving it to him for his birthday after tweaking with it. It’s a curious device in that it can transform anything into something else of similar size and mass. So a toaster becomes a mini roadster. Doctor Cruel wants it for obvious reasons and has a pair of fairly inept henchmen that he hired online searching for it, leading to the expected chaotic chase sequence that has to happen. We don’t get much in the way of backstory for Doctor Cruel, though his character is well played here. In some ways what we get is about the same as Kenny’s father, which provides for some interesting contrasts between the two with their disconnected natures and almost kind of klutzy feel about them.
In Summary:
The opening installment sets all the relatively standard things that you’d expect here and it does it well, though some of the early pacing feels a touch rushed and I wish we had a bit more about the difficulties father and son have since it’s so bad that Kenny’s ready to run. Kenny does have an intriguing dream sequence conversation with his dead mother that feels like it will mean something more and I really liked the creativity of the cube itself and what kind of MacGuffin it could represent in the end as more is revealed and discovered about it. Lopresti’s style is certainly solid and his years of experience give it a polished and clean look with some great detail, which Hi-Fi Design brings out even more. It’s an interesting book with a familiar starting concept that has some nice moments that leaves me curious to see how far they’ll go with it and what the end game is, at least in the short term since it’s a miniseries.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: September 23rd, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
