Turbulence is a new comic book series from small press publisher, Ronin Studios. The series is written by Chris Garrett and has artwork by Marilin Vans.

Turbulence is a superhero oriented series, which is actually quite rare for a small press title, as they tend to shy away from the territory of the big two. The obvious reason being that their really isn’t much fuel left in the superhero concept, and if you want to come up with something original, you’ve got to try REALLY hard.

So, does Turbulence have what it takes? Let’s find out…

The Story

The plot of the comic revolves around the origin and early career of a superhero known as Turbulence, whose real name is not given in the plot. Like many superheroes, Turbulence has an origin story that is mired in tragedy. When he was a young boy, the protagonist used to travel around the world with his father, who was a commercial airline pilot;  however, one dark day, tragedy strikes when their flight is taken over by terrorists. His father noticed the terrorists before they get to the cockpit, and hides the boy (who is sleeping) in a luggage compartment, while he goes to fend off the hijackers. This goes about as well as you’d expect, with the father being killed, and the boy waking up just in time to see his dead father sprawled out on the floor, with blood pouring from an gunshot wound to the chest.

We don’t meet Turbulence again until he is a young teenager who has recently discoved that he has wind based super-powers (hence the name), and has decided to forge himself a carer as a superhero. One day when he is in the mall looking for flight goggles to complete his costume, he gets his first chance to show off his powers, when a woman’s purse is snatched in a mall. He can’t use his wind powers though, because he doesn’t have his costume on him, and so has to rely his more normal skills.

It’s at this point that we are introduced to the wider world of superheroes in the comic, as we get introduced to another character, called Gravnos, who observes Turbulance’s performance in the mall and considers his for membership of his super-team. A team full of powerful teenagers, all imbued with variety of bizarre powers.

Gravnos decides to to observe Turbulence to see if he is good enough for the team. It’s not long before he gets to see him in a real battle, as that very night Turbulence attempts to foil a bank robbery, and finds himself facing off against a super-powered gangsta, whose power seems to be that he has one big bear claw (!).

Now, all of this would be pretty standard fair for a fledgling superhero comic, and there isn’t that much to make it standout from the crowd. That is until the final scene of the comic (spoilers), where we get to meet a mysterious stranger who visits the gagsta super-villain in jail, and spills the beans on his secret plan. Apparently, in this world, no-one gets their super-powers through genetics, or by accident; instead, all superheroes are granted their powers by this one omnipotent old man. He doesn’t care for concepts such as good or evil, but instead looks for people driven by a event such as the death of a loved one, and then grants them powers based upon their main passion (for example, giving wind based powers to a boy obsessed with his father’s career as a pilot). He does this solely based on a whim, and he just wants to see what happens when you give a great powers to certain individuals.

The Rating

I have to admit that I wasn’t all that excited by this comic at first glance. On the surface it appears to be another young superhero story in he vein of Invincible, early Spider-Man, and team books like the Teen Titans. Like I mentioned earlier, this idea has seen thousands of iterations, so new books really have to have something unique about them to keep my interest. I think the omnipotent stranger may very well do that for this title, and  I’m very interested in seeing where this plot-thread goes. He seems to have created all of these superheroes for his own reasons, and simply desires to see what happens when people are driven by different urges. This could lead to some rather interesting stories if that is the way the team plans to take the book.

The book is generally very well written, but I have to say that some of the dialogue felt a little forced, and seemed to be written with the intent of conveying certain information to the reader, rather than just being written as natural conversations.  Chris Garret can be excused for this though, because he has to establish a lot of plot in this introductory issue, as well as introduce a large amount of new characters. First issues are often like this, and it’s definitely preferable to the other option that people tend to go with: Exposition… urgh, I hate exposition!

The artwork on the book by Marilin Vans is incredibly good, with some really clean crisp linework, and nice subtle inking. Giving the book a really fresh and exciting look; this is in no way a “dark take” type of book, and has a much more all-ages feel to it, that Vans artwork suits perfectly. Vans’  has a great knack for conveying emotion, and the characters all have a great range of facial expressions, that always seem to suit the occasion perfectly. He also draws superpowers really well, that is to say that for a character like Turbulence, he draws these nice looking  grey lines to show how he is manipulating the air, and for a character like Grav-y he draws a purple shimmer effect to illustrate how gravity is being manipulated. It’s a pretty interesting way to go about it and gives the action scenes a really unique look!

In summary, Turbulence is an interesting little book, which takes a unique approach to what has become a rather cliched idea. With so many superhero books on the market, it’s hard for a new title to stand out, but I think Turbulence has what it takes to be a great series. If you are in the market for a new super hero book with an interesting premise, then I would really recommend that you pick up Turbulence #1!

Rating:

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To find out more about Turbulence #1 head on over to http://turbulencecomic.com/home.htm

Omnitarium is a title associated with Indy Comic Book Week on December 30th, to find out more about this, go to http://indycomicbookweek.blogspot.com/, or check out my feature on the event here

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