Take a Boring Trip Through Time
Creative Staff:
Story: Mark Alan Miller, Joe R. Lansdale
Art: Piotr Kowalski
Colors: Kelly Fitzpatrick
What They Say:
The Dark Rider’s tale is one of tragedy and cold-blooded murder. But how did he go from mild-mannered time traveler to the deadliest vampire the Old West has ever known?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I don’t really know what I was expecting when I decided to read the second issue of The Steam Man. The first issue was a disappointing mess with lackluster art and an offensively bad story. The Steam Man #2 aims to be even worse than the first issue somehow.
Our story begins with captain Beadle waking up and pointing a gun at John Feather because he said good morning. For some reason, Beadle doesn’t trust John. I swear, he just becomes distrustful of John out of nowhere with no context. John has been the most competent member of the team so far, despite being a wilderness tracker in a giant freaking robot (though we do see him helping to maintaining Steam Man in this issue). Who needs a likable protagonist? Anyway, the crew is gearing up to fight their nemesis, the Dark Rider.
From this point forward, I cannot go into details about the issue without spoiling the story. The rest of the issue is a long flashback explaining the origin of the Dark Rider. First off, there is no point in giving the reader a detailed history of the Dark Rider. We’ve literally never seen the guy except in shadow and we know nothing about him other than he kills people. The reader has no connection to the Rider since he was introduced halfway through last issue as the “true villain” of the series with no foreshadowing.
My point is this issue is crap and you shouldn’t read it. Below there are spoilers, but I’m going to be explaining the true failings of The Steam Man in detail. You have been warned.
So it turns out the Dark Rider was a human being who created the time machine. Not A time machine. THE time machine from the book The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. The time machine looks exactly the same as Wells’ version, and he even travels into the far future where the Morlocks rule.
Here’s the thing, Wells has inspired countless sci-fi stories after his time and almost every time travel story has origins in his famous novel. Even The War of the Worlds has inspired stories about alien invasions. The Steam Man isn’t interested in paying homage to those classic stories or using them as a framework for its own story. The writers decided to take these two H.G. Wells novels and hammer in a plot about a vampire and a giant steam powered robot. They did not even bother changing the details, merely using them as a crutch for a lack of creativity.
The Dark Rider goes into the far future because he can’t go backwards in time lest he create a time paradox. For some reason he thinks a forest in the future with no civilization is paradise. Get used to not knowing anything about the Dark Rider’s motivation. His actions are explained with throwaway lines about him witnessing wars and human atrocities as a thin justification for what happens in the plot. He meets the primitive future humans who watch as a woman drowns. The Dark Rider saves her and they fall in love. This story is really stupid.
If you’ve read The Time Machine, you know what happens next. The Morlocks come and take the humans away to eat. Now this next bit gets really confusing. The Dark Rider goes forward in time, moves the time machine slightly to the left, over a hill of rocks instead of around the hill of rocks. The time machine falls and breaks slightly. He goes back in time slightly to the left before the Morlocks showed up, and beats them up to save his love. However, his convoluted plan comes at a price. He is transformed into a flesh eating monster who kills and consumes his lover. There are no words to describe how dumb all of this was. The issue ends with him going backwards in time and learning all of time has bled together and he was the one who brought the aliens to earth. He enlists the power of the Morlocks to do something evil I guess. Yeah I have no idea what his true purpose is supposed to be.
That’s where the issue ends and we learned absolutely nothing about the Dark Rider other than his origins. A villain’s motivation is important for the reader understand and give context to the story. We want to root against the villain and to do that we have to know why the villain is evil. I think the writers are trying to set up the Dark Rider as a tragic character, cursed by fate. However, you have to give the reader something relatable to connect with if you want to make your character sympathetic. The Dark Rider is such a vague entity that he has absolutely no personality other than angry and reckless.
As much as I hate to say it, this comic could have benefited by ripping off the remake of The Time Machine. Imagine if the Dark Rider’s wife in the present had died. He uses the time machine to go back in time, even though he knows that will create a paradox, to try and save her. He goes back, but everything is slightly different and he fails to save her. He keeps going back and each time something is different, like the aliens showing up. In the end, he goes back and is bitten by a creature which was spawned by time travel and he is transformed into a monster. The Dark Rider is born and ends up consuming his wife instead of saving her. That would have created a much more sympathetic character and gives him a clear motivation the reader can understand. Instead we got a boring bad guy who is somehow going to fight a giant steam powered robot. I have no idea who thought this was a good idea.
In Summary:
The Steam Man continues to be a bland story filled with uninteresting characters by making the main bad guy a boring monster. In this issue, we get to see the origins of the Dark Rider and he somehow turns into a vampire through time travel. The book is a tedious slog that leaves you unfulfilled at best, and angry at worst.
Grade: F
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: November 18th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
