cover image Dark Engine, Vol. 1: The Art of Destruction

Dark Engine, Vol. 1: The Art of Destruction

Ryan Burton and John Bivens. Image, $9.99 trade paper (112p) ISBN 978-1-63215-176-6

In their first collaboration, Burton and Bivens have created an earth gone wrong, where the globe is swarming with nightmarish demons and humanity’s only hope for salvation lies in the hands of a time-traveling topless homicidal savant known simply as Sym. As the alchemists who created her wait for Sym to kill “the enemy” and restore the world to its true nature, the last dragon—in this world flightless—quests for a monstrous steed to pilot. Burton’s narrative is a complex beast, much like Bivens’s creatures themselves. Readers may need to look back frequently to make sense of the story, which reads mostly as a prologue to the second volume. Very little of this world’s lore is explained, leaving readers to muddle through until things become clearer at the 11th hour. This is the book’s greatest failing, as too little is told for the reader to fully understand what is being shown. Fortunately, backtracking is another opportunity to soak up Bivens’s intriguing, Paul Pope–influenced pencils. The action can be hard to follow—compounding the puzzlement brought on by Burton’s script—but the scenes are beautifully set, resulting in a confounding but intriguing introduction. (Jan.)