Creative Staff:
Story: Joe R. Lansdale
Script: Mark Alan Miller
Art: Piotr Kowalski
Colors: Kelly Fitzpatrick
What They Say:
The Old West, but not as we know it. Giant steam-powered robots are created to take down invading Martians and armies of killer albino apes in an all-out brawl. The Steam Man, a giant metal man operated by a team of monster hunters, seems to have the town protected and the West under control, until a crazed and powerful vampire comes to town to bring forth the apocalypse!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While the theme of “aliens versus 1800s society” isn’t zombie-levels of prominent, the marriage of these two very different ideas has been covered in enough movies/TV/comics to no longer be the most novel of ideas to run with. That said, Steam Man at least makes an effort to throw in some defining factors to its otherwise very run-of-the-mill first issue.
The Steam Man, as the name implies, is a giant steam-powered, top-hat-wearing robot. The robot itself is powered by a small team of men and was created as a means to fend off aliens in the form of squid-monsters that in turn operate giant squid robots. From the get-go the concept itself is very ridiculous and comic-booky but it’s handled well enough and knows just the right amount of ridiculous to bring to the table. Absolutely no time is spent talking over the specifics of the Steam Man (did the aliens just wait for this rural society to construct a giant killbot?), with time instead spent on the fight between the Steam Man and aliens. The fight is short-lived and knows just the right amount of visceral robot-fighting to show before throwing a wrench in the story.
Oddly enough, the aliens (dubbed “squid men”) begin to die out due to unknown reasons, leading to the Steam Man crew to soon discover a new evil in the form of the Dark Rider. Beadle, the captain of the Steam Man, describes the Dark Rider as something of a vampire minus the weakness to garlic and crosses. Acting mainly at night and feasting on the blood of humans, the Dark Rider is revealed to be the true enemy, somehow being the reason for the squid men’s arrival and the world’s sudden climate change to an icy apocalypse. And with the Dark Rider having killed Beadle’s wife, it’s all the more reason for his crew to hunt down the monster.
Add to this some brief plot-cool-down in the form of Beadle and his crew maintaining the Steam Man while throwing around some technobabble in an attempt at world-building, and it makes for a mostly trite first issue.
In Summary:
The problem with all issue #1s of comics is that so little time is spent trying to not only grab the reader’s attention, but also establish enough of the world and create likeable characters that you’re willing to keep following throughout their journey. While Steam Man offers an interesting enough twist with the initial threat immediately dying off to make way for the true villain, everything else about the issue felt very by-the-book, with the crew of the Steam Man being composed of nothing but manly, snarky men and led by a captain that’s out for revenge for a wife we barely spend any time getting to know. I’m sure later issues will resolve the problems I have, but I just have no desire to continue any further given this lukewarm first issue.
Grade: C+
Age Rating: 17+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: October 21st, 2015
MSRP: $3.99