Review:
James Robinson pens a layered tale with mystery, some forensic police work and a handful of innovative and imaginative plot twists. Personal favorites include the armored Spyder-man, whose powers come from a virus infecting his armor, and James Rhodes as an armored Thor.
But Technopolis is no tech-utopia. Beyond the stunning urban architecture in the panel backgrounds, the premise of it being an "amazing domain of science and wonder" in the marketing hype is not conveyed in either the story or the art.
On the contrary, Marcio Takara's art is gritty, grimy, blocky, heavily inked and dark. Human emotion and expressiveness is limited to partial faces, when the armored city denizens retract some portion of their protective headgear. It is a constraint that Takara's art is unable to overcome, which loses much of the human impact of the story.
Takara does however do a solid job with visual distinctions in our characters, despite the limitations of everyone wearing full body armor. With limited ability to give people distinguishing facial or physical characteristics or visual gender cues, his approach relies more on trim, cogs and other armor features.
The Battleworld Warzones! framework gives Marvel creators a platform to try some unusual experiments, and this one sounded particularly imaginative and promising: a disease that causes all people in the city to become armor-wearing mini Iron Men and Women, all produced by two rival Stark brothers. Alas the story fails to hold our interest beyond its potential-filled premise, nor do the dark and oil-coated visuals. With "War" so prominent in the book's title and series, it is no surprise that it breaks into large-scale armored battles in the end, but even with the violence and shocking revelations, the reader is left ultimately disappointed.
2 capes out of 5.
Description:
A SHADOW FALLS OVER AN ARMORED UTOPIA. TECHNOPOLIS: Amazing Domain of science and wonder created by rival genius brothers TONY AND ARNO STARK. A utopia except...a unique disease forces EVERYONE to wear armor to live and breathe. In this armored land a hero is murdered and the killer's identity a mystery Baron Tony Stark must solve. But in doing so, will Technopolis be forced into a civil war?
Collects: Armor Wars #1/2 and #1-5
Authors: James Robinson
Artists: Marcio Takara
Published By: Marvel
Published When: Feb. 9 2016
Parental Rating: Teen
ISBN-10: 0785198644
ISBN-13: 978-0785198642
Language: English
Pages: 112 pages
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