Something (mechanically) wicked this way comes.
Creative Staff:
Story: Frank J. Barbiere
Art: Crizam Cristhian Zamora
Colors: Dinei Ribeiro
What They Say:
In the sprawling, steampunk metropolis of the big city, it’s up to one group to keep the peace and uphold the law-the officers of The Precinct! Mortimer Hill is a veteran officer who has busted his fair share of criminals, but when mechanical monsters start causing trouble he’ll need to use all his wits (and brawn!) to get to the heart of the mystery. Along with his new partner-a representative from the enigmatic Alchemy Academy-Mort will face the biggest case of his career-and the most dangerous!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The world of steampunk is something that I certainly enjoy, though I’ll easily admit that finding the ones that click for me are few and far between. It’s similar to the old cyberpunk materials in that there’s a lot of great, a lot of bad and not all that much in between. Dynamite’s been playing in the steampunk area for a bit and now has this new five issue series out written by Frank J. Barbiere and illustrated by Crizam Zamora. I enjoyed some of Zamora’s work earlier this year and continue to have an interest in what Barbiere writes since there are neat ideas even if not always executed in a fully satisfying way. I’m looking at you, Solar Man of the Atom.
The Precinct gives us a familiar world where it has a kind of London feeling about it for me as we’re presented with The Big City. It’s a fairly straightforward place in terms of its characters and design with the costuming of the era handled well without going too far overboard. The simple things like the goggles, some of the prosthetics, and other little touches give it the right feeling. The use of the steam technology is big and while we get the mention at one point that The Big City is a bright and sparkling place, it’s still got that kind of old style darkness about it that works. The odd element out is the Alchemy Academy, where this ancient group in pursuit of the sciences exist and work without the use of steam in their endeavours. This gives them a special position within the hierarchy of the city, revered and feared but also potentially about to fall out of the times.
Like a lot of stories, this one kicks off with a murder within it as an esteemed member of the Academy and the Democratic Board has been killed. There’s a blood ritual involved in it and that gets the police involved in a big way, with its focal point on our lead of Mortimer Hill. He’s got a prosthetic arm and is focused on protecting the city because he lost so much himself over the years and just wants others to have a good life. He’s amusingly gruff and off-putting in dealing with others, both within his profession and without. So it’s naturally going to be complicated when he’s assigned to work with Josephine, an acolyte of the Academy sent to help since one of their own was taken down. The two have the familiar back and forth since she doesn’t take much from him, but she comes across as just as problematic as he is because of her faith in alchemy that runs parallel to his in steam.
Most of what we get here is standard stage setting as we know the city a bit, introduce the characters and their dynamic decently enough, while providing the motivation for it all. There are some nice smaller nods along the way to the threat at hand, or at least the first public aspect of it with a mechanical demon of some sort causing trouble. This gets a few appearances in shadows at first that works nicely to give it the right kind of mystery and to play up the way it’s uncertain as to what’s out there. That said, since there’s no motivations at this point it’s just simple violence with whatever agenda it has. But right now the focus is simply on getting us to invest in the city and the characters itself.
In Summary:
The Precinct runs with familiar themes and ideas here and largely executes it well as there’s little to complain about. Some of the character material is just a bit formulaic at this point, but that’s because we don’t know them and there’s only so much time to really dig into the two leads. Both are off-putting in their own ways so you don’t really gravitate to one over the other, which I rather like as being a part of it. Zamora’s artwork is solid enough, but the steampunk world really needs something with a different level of depth and detail to really sell it beyond being a niche concept and setting.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: December 9th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
