Greg Pak

I've read enough comics about the Phoenix that I can stomach another melodrama about Jean and Scott and The Universe-Engulfing Firebird, especially with Greg Pak's able blockbuster storytelling, but good gravy Greg Land needs to find a new method for illustrating women. The illustrations themselves are beautiful and realistic, but Land keeps drawing women with pinup or orgasmic facial expressions, and I felt dirty just for reading. I mean, mainstream comics already tend to objectify women show more pretty heavily, but this is another level activating my prudish alarm.

Also, the whole Warsong story continued to beat a dead Phoenix with the whole "who will house this overdramatic omnipotent force to be unleashed whenever Marvel needs a villain to occupy everyone's attention for a few issues?" show less

This isn't the best. I love the firefly characters and universe. I came to it through the show, but now like the comics as well. Volume 1 isn't a waste of time, but it disappointed me.

- The art isn't great and is also inconsistent. Faces in particular bothered me and River Tam seems to lack a face for almost the entire book.
- The plot is alright, but the allegations of war crimes are too vague and over emphasized. I want Mal to have some skeletons in the closet, but I don't like the idea show more of him being a genuine war criminal
- The world is the Firefly universe that I find fascinating, but seems to have zeroed in on some of the flakier aspects. Why are the pilgrims using covered wagons and horses when everyone else has spaceships and hover cars? I like the space cowboy-hillbilly vibe that comes from people living at the edges of the settled universe, but it seems dumb when its coming from the central government. Those guys are supposed to be polished and corporate in a slimy way. show less

Let's get the most important thing out of the way first: The character voices work. They're not always 100% there, but more often than not, they're pretty close, and for several scenes and exchanges I effortlessly and automatically hear the original actors' voices in my head when I read them. The same compliment can be paid to the character motivations, and the plotting. It's not always 100%, but it's damned close, and much more so than I would expect (getting this right is very, very hard). show more In all these regards, "Unification War" continues to place itself solidly among the upper half of Firefly/Serenity comics made over the years. The voice of Mal in his dealings with his new nemesis and of Simon, Jayne and River in a hilarious identity dispute were particular highlights to me.

The artwork is fine enough. The character likenesses are a good bit further off than one might like, and I sometimes have a hard time telling if River is River or Inara, but the drawings tell the story, are nice to look at, and don't lead to a lot of unnecessary confusion.

My main complaint, actually, is that the plot developments in this volume feel too big for its place in the continuity. "Unification War" takes place well before "Serenity", during the heydays of the crew, and the way the story is unfolding by the end of this book feels incongruous with the scale, level of notoriety and general atmosphere of the TV show. If the series had gone on for a couple of years, they could easily have done a plotline just like this one -- but they didn't. And if this story was set after the (similarly big) events of the "Serenity" film, I'd also have no issue. But for being about the small crew of smugglers during an established, under-the-radar period in their life, their actions are just taking on too big of a presence in their 'verse here for it to ring true to me. Fingers crossed the resolution in volume 3 will remedy that, because it's a very small complaint in a book I otherwise really enjoyed. show less

More or less the love child of Pacific Rim and The Iron Giant, Mech Cadet Yu is a fun book that I found myself enjoying more and more thru each chapter. For the last sixty years, every four years giant Mechs fall from the sky and bond with a young child and thru that bond and the training the young cadet has gone thru, they become a champion of the human race against the alien threat of the Sharg. No one knows where the Mechs come from and no one knows how they choose the child they bond show more with, but they have become the front line defense for the human race. In the most recent bonding, one of the Mechs chooses Standford Yu, the son of a janitor at Sky Corps, who has had no experience or training to be a Mech pilot/companion but because the Mech has chosen him, he is thrown immediately into training.

There is the inevitable rivalry between Yu and the daughter of the program director who has supposed to bond with the third Mech and is instead given the first human-built Mech (which reminds me very much stylistically of the Evangelion mechs), and of course they are immediately thrown into a battle with the Sharg when no one is prepared for this since they are still first year cadets, and of course they win this battle; to be fair, the entire story is and of itself a very simple heroes journey, and one that we've all read before. However, Greg Pak's writing really brings some heart and soul to both the cadets and their Mechs and the whole thing just feels fresh in a very nostalgic way. Takeshi Miyazawa's art is dynamic and his Mech designs are both intimidating and friendly; these are robots that can kick ass and be your best friend.

I am pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this initial volume and am looking forward to reading more of Yu's adventures. show less