Not firing on all cylinders.
Creative Staff:
Story and Art: André Lima Araújo
Colors: Arsia Rozegar
Letters: Tom Williams
What They Say:
AESTHETICS OF THE MODERN SYNTHETIC
As Olissipo’s crack police squad piece together the cause of the recent android attack, a dangerous thread of violence and corruption begins to unravel, leading from the city’s seediest ghettos, to the dizzying heights of its business district.
From artist/writer André Lima Araújo (Avengers AI, Spider Verse) comes the riveting second chapter of this high-octane dystopian thriller that whisks the reader into the thick of a robotic skirmish and the unsettling conspiracy that lies at its heart…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
A rogue android with ties to the megacorporation that runs Olissipo City runs amok. Cornered on an overpass by the police, the android pleads for help, holding her cybernetic guts in her hands in a rather disturbing scene. The police attempt to subdue her, but her programming glitches and she fights back, all the while apologizing. She slips away, and now all the information the police has on the situation lies in the dead body of a mercenary. What the police discover takes them to the very height of power in Olissipo City.
After reading two issues, I think it’s safe to say that this story is going to be a slow burn. Because this is a science fiction piece, Araújo must not only establish the characters and the plot, he also has to build the world, and all of that takes time and comic real estate. The problem isn’t anything new—it’s endemic of world building: the more you build the world, the more you have to slow down the plot.
To Araújo’s credit, he does a pretty good job of balancing the two. He makes use of the comic genre and provides us with extraneous material at the end to help flesh out this world. He also makes great use of the visual nature of the medium to establish the time and place.
However, while the art is and world building stand strong, the plot wears a bit thin right now. Strip away the setting and the science fictional elements and you’ve got a mystery. Who is this android? What does the Jiqiren Corporation and its CEO want with her? What is she, anyway? Taken alone, these are perfectly fine questions to base a mystery on, but there’s no real narrative drive to add the necessary energy to keep me engaged. A dystopian technothriller mystery should keep me glued to the page, examining any clue—looking for any purloined letters that might indicate the answer to the question—but I don’t feel that way. As much as writers talk about conflict being the engine that drives a plot, mystery stands as just as important an element, but there’s no bite to this mystery, and therefore no bite to this story.
I like the world, I like the characters, but I don’t particularly feel engaged with this story. It could be that, like most slow burning stories, the real meat of the work will appear closer to the climax. That strikes me as a dangerous. Whether it’s right or wrong, Western civilization has lost what little patience it once possessed. We want everything now now now and if it doesn’t catch our interest then we change the channel or pick up another book because there’s a surfeit of material out there. You have to capture a person’s interest and keep it. I’m old enough to appreciate a slow burn, and I’ve read enough to know that sometimes you have to let a story breath and move at its own pace, but I do wonder how well this will appeal to a larger and younger audience. As it is, I want to like this comic more than I do, but I simply don’t feel engaged.
In Summary:
Sometimes it’s difficult to pin down why you enjoy a story, or why you don’t enjoy a story. In the case of Man Plus I feel like I should like it. It has all the elements I typically look for in a work: an interesting location, an element of the fantastic, and a mystery; however, the mystery lacks a certain sense of allure and immediacy, and that kills the narrative drive for me. The art is great, as is the world building, but it’s just not working for me. Dr. Josh gives this a…
Grade: B-
Age Rating: M
Released By: Titan Comics
Release Date: February 17th, 2016
MSRP: $3.99
