Two hundred years later…
Creative Staff:
Story: Cullen Bunn
Art: Black Shepherd
Colors: Adriano Augusto
What They Say:
More than 200 years ago, Voltron Force fought its final battle against the Drule Empire. Voltron has not moved since that battle, but his legacy lives on. Now, an ancient enemy has arisen, and a new Voltron Force must be chosen to pilot the Defender of the Universe!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While I never got into Voltron in any of its forms when it was first broadcast in North America, my time in the anime field certainly got me to watch it in full in both its original language and the English language adaptation. Though there were pieces of it that I certainly liked, it was never a franchise that I was totally into, particularly since it was not a gateway series for me to the world of anime, having done that through Robotech. But having that gateway series myself I know the power of it and how it can open a person up to a larger world and a lot of other ideas. So Voltron certainly did that for many and, like Robotech, has spawned a number of comic adaptations and continuations over the years,
With this series, set to run six issues, Cullen Bunn has taken on the writing chores while Blacky Shepherd is handling the artwork for it. The opening book does what it can to provide a bridge between what came before and where Bunn wants to go with it now, giving us a little Haggar in Slumberland material as she drifts through space, dreaming of how things ended with her last confrontation with Voltron. The not knowing how it played out has haunted her dreams to be sure, as she felt she was on the cusp of victory, but as we know from the series she didn’t win. But now she’s been floating in space for two hundred years and is about to be awakened to wreak havoc on the galaxy once again. It’s a familiar reversal of sorts from the Aliens film with Ripley but the book does a decent job of showing some of that last night with the old crew, so we get some time with Hunk, Allura and all the others as they fight and struggle. But as the book isn’t about them there isn’t enough context for a new reader to totally get on board with them, which is fine. It’s more about setting the stage for the history that was.
What it wants to do in the present time period is to take us to a place where generations have struggled to become worthy of piloting the Voltron, should the need arise. Amusingly, there’s been nothing worthy of that in the years since the last battle, though that doesn’t mean centuries of peace. A society of sorts has built up around the remains of Voltron and colored teams practice and work to be worthy of it. There some familiar Western influence to looking towards the future here in how it would look and unfold, reminding me of other similar books from decades ago, and the team here captures it well enough as we see a young man named Jayce that’s part of the black team that’s not getting it. It’s a familiar refrain with the guy who can do it all on his own but can’t equal what a team can do, leading to frustrations all around, admonishments and more. What we get from this is a good look at the basic premise of how the Voltron mythology moves forward from here with the team that will evolve, though it’s unclear of Jayce’s team will take on the colors of all or if it’ll be the black team taking on Voltron and its parts to figure out how to really be a team. The threat is all off-panel at the moment so while there’s some tension there’s no real forward momentum here.
In Summary:
Bunn does a decent enough job in capturing some of the dynamics and feel of the original work, both in the flashback sequence and with the new characters, but it also reminds me why I found the original series so simple and frustrating. What we get here in the first setup issue for the six issue run makes it clear that it’s definitely going for a simplified approach to storytelling, keeping in tune to what came before, rather than looking for a way to take it up a few notches and expand upon it in more interesting ways. Bunn’s characters are totally in line with the original work and Shepherd gets the look of it right, more so in the flashback for going with the anime designs than with the newer characters. Which is about what I expected. The other area that kind of didn’t work for me here is the color design, which goes with the traditional style that a lot of Dynamite’s books employ. While it’s not overdone in blacks that obscures the line work it also just feels too saturated and overdone when a softer palette would have worked better. I can see them trying to mirror animation here to a degree but it just feels very off.
Grade: C
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: September 16th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
