Moderator: crazyankan
Two and a half stars for this one.
In the distant future, a meteorite's shattering impact has reduced the Earth into a planet of ice and desolation. With the eradication of much of the world's natural resources, it's been so hard rebuilding civilization. And yet a huge chunk of this series takes place in Megaplex One, a technological oasis and one of the first cities rebuilt after the cataclysm. The story begins in the Freezer, a remote military outpost in which an aging scientist has just created the complete cybernetic being, E.V.E. Powered by the heavens and yet a cold and artificial intelligence, E.V.E, in this age and time, will become this sad world's best hope for salvation.
That's a bit ironic because one of the very first things she does when first activated is to go off on wetwork missions.
E.V.E PROTOMECHA: SINS OF THE DAUGHTER is a trade which collects issues #1-6 of the series, originally published by Top Cow/Image Comics in 1999. To my knowledge, only these six issues have seen the light of day. And how is it? Well, this could've been a very decent post-apocalyptic story, if not for a couple of things. Aron Lusen and Christian Lichtner, better known as the work horses behind the Liquid! Graphics coloring studio, created and wrote E.V.E PROTOMECHA, but they're better at coloring comic books than at writing them. To be blunt, this series suffers from weak execution, from poor plotting, and just from overall shoddy storytelling. The action sequences are hohum, and, while the manga-style artwork is mostly good and glossy, Ale Garza's pencils tend to be at times muddled and bewildering. There are passages where I had to spend moments puzzling out just exactly what I was looking at. On the other hand, the vibrant colors leap right out of the pages and into your grill.
Lusen and Lichtner people their series straight from central casting. Particularly irritating is the brash and irresponsible jock hero who later on tries to atone for his screw-ups. Serving as a bad guy (but not the main bad guy), there's a megalomaniacal military general. The character I liked best is probably the cybernetic soldier Gunner, who years ago had his consciousness transplanted into a robot body. But even he seems like a pretty shallow personality. So, in more than one fashion, Gunner is not a fleshed-out character.
Firstly, the six issues here aren't enough to do justice to a world-building story like this. It aspires to be a post-apocalyptic tale of redemption and hope, but it falls short of achieving pathos and that sense of excitement and anticipation. I didn't buy into it. The story feels rushed, feels like the writers were negligent in covering ample ground with regards to background and history and even geopolitical standing. As it is, E.V.E's world comes off like those fake propped-up buildings in movie sets.
That old question: Can an artificial intelligence have a soul? And yet, in these pages, that question doesn't resonate as deeply. E.V.E, as the main protagonist, isn't really well served. From a visual aspect, she's finely rendered, sexy clad in battle armor and with shimmering biomechanical wings. It's her characterization which falls apart. One big gaff is that E.V.E's conversion from unfeeling automaton to sympathetic soul comes about too abruptly. Again, I can't help but think that a few more issues would've gone a long way in making the humanization of E.V.E feel like a more natural progression.
By the way, this is bugging me. Does anyone know what "E.V.E" stands for? Is it even an acronym or merely an affectation? The issues never do explain. And why isn't there a dot after the last "E" in E.V.E?
E.V.E Protomecha is part sci-fi, part fantasy. This paragraph may contain SPOILERS - yet the story makes no bones about featuring angels and demons. The angels themselves show up as early as the third page of the first issue, although you can kind of sense which way the wind is blowing just by the way these angels are drawn.
Since Aron Lusen and Christian Lichtner had amicably parted ways a few years ago, I doubt very much that there'll be more stories of E.V.E Protomecha in the future. It's too bad. In more seasoned hands, this series could've been more. But, hey, at least the coloring is nice and bright.
To maintain the flavor of this series, even the foreword by comic book scribe Joe Kelly is weak.
