Small Press Comic Review – Tech Storm: Rages of War #2 (of 2)

Techstorm: Rages of War #2 is a sci-fi comic written, illustrated and lettered by Ryan Crouse. The comic is self-published by Crouse, and released under his Star Verse Comics label.

I get sent a lot of comics for review, and sometimes I don’t have time to review them all; however, I have the policy that if someone has gone out of their way and send me an actual physical copy of their small press release, I WILL review that comic, no matter what!

Sometimes this policy does bite me in the ass though, like it did with this comic. You see, Techstorm: Rages of War #2 is the second part of a two part story… do you see where this is going? Yep, I obviously haven’t read the first part of the story, and was now stuck reading the concluding chapter! It’s OK though, the Internet came to the rescue, and I was able to read a brief summary of what happened in issue #1.

Techwar is set in a future where robots and cyborgs, led by an enigmatic robot known as Death, have turned on mankind (that old chestnut), and the human forces, led by a man called Ridor are fighting a loosing battle. Ridor’s son has been injured, and while he is recovering in the science center the lab he is in is attacked, and some crazy-ass science stuff happens that ends up with him being coated in a living armour, making him a super soldier. Now known as Tech War, he rallies the human forces and they start to take the fight to the robots. At the end of the first issue Tech War blows up the fortress of the robot leader, and Death is assumed to be… dead?

Got all that? Good…

Issue #2 opens just after this closing scene, with Tech Storm leaving Death’s fortress to go home to the human stronghold. When he gets home his dad tells him to go back to the fortress and check that Death is really dead, which is something you think you’d do anyway, right?! He’s right to be worried, because Death suddenly rises out of the rubble of the fortress, then is suddenly on a spaceship talking to some guy. Back at the human base, cyborgs are attacking, and Tech Storm is getting overwhelmed, then out of nowhere, some other super soldier guy called Thunderion turns up and helps, with no explanation what-so-ever. On Death’s ship we find out that the guy he is talking to is Cyberior, the cyborg lord… whoever he is. Then Tech Storm and Thunderion turn up and there’s a big fight, but death manages to escape in the confusion. Then for no reason his escape pod explodes in mid flight, and his head is found by some guy in the middle of the desert…

OK, I really don’t like to give bad reviews, but this comic made my head hurt! Not because it was complex, in fact as you can see above the plot is actually incredibly simple. What was confusing is that the storytelling was so choppy that the action jumps from scene to scene without explanation of how a character get there. In one scene Death is rising out of the rubble, then in the next he is suddenly in a space ship! The plotting is also pretty bad, with characters doing very odd things, such as Tech Storm going back to base before even checking for the remains of Death, only to be sent back to check for them by his father… it makes no sense!!! Then we have things like the random introduction of characters like Thunderion and Cyberior, who just turn up half way through the comic unannounced, and actually contribute nothing what-so-ever to the plot.The comic is also packed for of exposition, which annoys me at the best of times, but here it keeps shifting between present and past tense, which is a big no no!

The artwork on the comic isn’t too bad, it’s definitely more comix level, and very rough around the edges. There is also a bit of an uneven quality to the art throughout the book, as sometimes characters will just be basic sketches, and then will be far more detailed just a couple of panels later. One thing that could do with a little work is the grasp of human anatomy, as there are a few oddities occasionally, like a few characters having long ostrich-like necks, and many of the characters are ridiculously muscle-bound, and I’m talking steroid central here! Overall though, it’s quite decent, but not great.

Which brings me to the lettering. The lettering is probably the worst thing about this production, and really drags the quality down a notch. The book is hand lettered and is done in a lower-case script that can be a little messy at times, making it hard to read. Occasionally the lettering slips into uppercase, sometimes admittedly for EMPHASIS, and is peppered throughout with random Capitalization of words That really Shouldn’t be capitalized. Also, there are tons of spelling mistakes throughout the text, and I know I’m a snob for this, but bad spelling in a printed publication just pisses me off!!!

Something that I found quite bizarre (spelled “Bizzare” in the comic) about this title was that the back pages are filled with the writer’s reviews of other comics. This seems like such a weird thing to do!!

Tech Storm can be purchased from Star Verse Comics for $4 US an issue with shipping.