One night in Florence and the world’s your oyster…
Creative Staff:
Story: Paul Allor
Art: Chris Evenhuis
Colors: Sjan Weijers
Letterer: Paul Allor
What They Say:
Leonardo and Isabel return to Florence to take on new roles and new responsibilities. As Leonardo faces renewed pressure from both Florence and Rome, Isabel realizes that something needs to change—and fast!
But before all that: Girls’ night out!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The first volume of Monstro Mechanica comes to a close with this issue and its one that, strangely enough, works better than the last couple. Paul Allor makes it a bit more character focused and has things moving forward in a somewhat logical way, though I admit to being lost as to some of the sides and power players as they haven’t been well realized for me at this point. It’s also an issue where it felt like Evnehuis’ artwork clicks better since it’s focused more on back and forth between characters and because Weijer’s color work doesn’t make it feel quite as cartoony as it has in the past. It’s still got the same problems as previous issues with what comes here built upon it but it was a more straightforward and engaging read with which to close out the volume.
Bringing everyone back to Florence after the siege adventure works well as it’s been a month since then and we see Isabel out with Letta and Suhita drinking, which is fun because of how they get away with more dressed as men. But that’s falling apart now that Alessandro is the new captain of the guard and he’s not letting them get away with this as there are issues between him and Isabel. To make matters worse, he’s still going on about what a danger the Monstro is even though it’s been offline for the past month, which frustrates Isabel to no end. It doesn’t take much to raise her hackles and Alessandro is able to do it all too easily, even as her friends try to ease her down a bit so they can finish out the night without trouble. It’s a fun sequence overall as it really humanized just about all of them and it felt like a natural kind of moment.
When it comes to the other side of the book things are a little more complicated. Essentially, Da Vinci is doing his best to play everyone against each other so that he can continue to do what he wants to do in bringing new things and beauty into the world. While getting told to knock off his playing with other men and focus on what people want of him with his creations to inspire fear, he’s mostly just in a bad place and wanting to put it all behind him. But he’s also being tested, which doesn’t work out well for the tester as the Monstro destroys him, and he does manage to secure his position for a bit longer. But even that’s not to his liking as the Monstro is something that he still doesn’t have much interest in and the whole thing leaves him incredibly frustrated. Isabel’s not thrilled with all of this either and with what he’s doing but at least her final act of this volume is to finally give the Monstro eyes, which may be cruel depending on your view of what the Monstro is.
In Summary:
At this stage, I’m hesitant to say whether I’ll come back for a second volume or not. There are parts of the Monstro Mechanica series that I liked but also a lot of it that was problematic, both in writing and the visual presentation. This issue eased up on all of the problems I had but the crux of it was still there in that it doesn’t have a solid enough or accessible enough foundation to latch onto and I’m not quite sure what story point it wants to make as a whole. The neat moments are simply outweighed by the problematic ones and that’s just hard to get past.
Grade: C
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: April 4th, 2018
MSRP: $3.99