Mark Allen reviews Mechanism #1…
In the aftermath of an alien invasion, a prototype military robot is rushed into the field before it is combat-ready. Now attached to a group of survivors, it studies them to learn what it means to be human. Will it come to understand man as a noble creature worth preserving or that the human race isn’t worth saving at all?
Mechanism continues Image’s trend of putting out a new high-concept sci-fi book every other week, following in the footsteps of Asimov-influenced Descender in imagining a world where robots are widespread but distrusted by most of their human masters. Sadly, the intellectual and emotional nuance found in Lemire and Nguyen’s book is conspicuously absent from this new offering.
The scene writer/artist Rafaelle Ienco sets is a bleak one: years after an alien invasion destroyed much of the U.S.A, an older man deals with grief while scavenging the ruins of an off-limits Philadelphia for anything he and his trusty mutt might be able to sell or eat to make a living. Meanwhile, a pair of beat cops who patrol the outskirts of the local safe zone bicker about their partnership and the new, motionless android they’ve been assigned to look after. In flashback, we meet the synthetic’s creator, a frustrated man who apparently had to delete much of his creation’s higher functions in order to let it back out into the world, suggesting perhaps that the Singularity may have been reached with terrible consequences.
In theory, all of this should provide plenty of story to latch onto, but Ienco’s panels give us more rote exposition than meaningful backstory. The badinage between the two cops is dreadful – like tin dialogue from a cut-rate buddy movie without the laughs – but at least involves two characters speaking to one another, as opposed to the scavenger’s mopey monologues delivered to his dog with a straight face. The shiny, faux-realist art brings to mind character models from early-’00s videogames, the peculiar rendering giving them an uncanny, mannequin-like quality that sticks out like a sore thumb.
One thing that doesn’t stick out is the ending of Mechanism‘s first issue, which closes on the scientist’s narration telling us just how special the robot he’s created is going to be, superimposed on a scene of action in which said robot…does nothing. If your idea of creating intrigue is telling the audience that something compelling is going to happen at some future point in a story, there’s a serious flaw in how you’re telling it. An audience should be enthralled by page one, not told that they have to wait a month and buy a new issue for the good part to begin.
Rating: 2/10
Mark Allen
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Originally published July 30, 2016. Updated April 14, 2018.
