A new shared universe begins in Void Rivals #1, written by Robert Kirkman, drawn by Lorenzo De Felici, colored by Matheus Lopes and lettered by Rus Wooton for Image/Skybound.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Two mortal rivals crash land in the same place and have to bond together to survive.
Yes, this setup is so common that it’s a trope. And like all tropes, it’s all about how you handle them. In Void Rivals #1, I would say it’s pretty damn successful. Plus, as everyone’s talking about, there’s a twist. A BIG one.
Darak and Solila are two soldiers on opposite sides of a long war. They’ve crash landed on a desolate alien world with only limited rations, Darak’s Handroid and their ruined ships (I suspect it’s a world that we as readers are familiar with, though). Together they’re going to have to figure out how to make it through their situation, but they’re about to be drawn into another war entirely.
Kirkman and De Felici take the familiar tropes of Enemy Mine and turn it into a fun, gorgeous action comic. The characters are familiar enough archetypes that we can get invested in them quickly. The Handroid — an autonomous glove-bot — adds a bit of humor and infuses the trope with something fresh. It’s a really solid start to a series that will just grow from here.
De Felici and Lopes are the main draw here, though. Kirkman’s script is relatively sparse, mostly just delivering exposition, allowing the art team to shine. De Felici’s designs and layouts show his storytelling chops, and become a tool for showing these two rivals struggle and start to grow together. Even though they’re both masked in hi-tech armor, they’re extremely expressive, showing desperation, resignation and even the beginnings of kinship before they unmask.
Lopes’ colors really bring the pencils to life. Good color art is as essential to world building as the line art, in my opinion, and Lopes nails it here. He gives Darak and Solila interesting visual personalities to help the script and line art build them up more. He also makes the starscape behind our protagonists come to life.
Also, major kudos to Wooton. On top of having clear, readable lettering that delivers a lot of exposition without overwhelming the page, he gets to have some fun. His alien balloons are distinct, and give the impression of a unique tone, without being distracting.
Oh, and to top it all off, there’s a Transformer.
I’m not saying this in the generic sense. As the heroes try to rebuild their ship, they discover another crashed alien ship, which turns out to be a Cybtertronian named Jetfire.
Yep.
Now we’ve known that Kirkman’s wanted to write Transformers for years. And he’s probably the only creator in comics who can pull off a reveal like this (“Hey, BTW, we got the license, surprise!”). The important thing here though is that he does it well. It’s a genuinely exciting moment in the story, and while it has a certain amount of shock value, that shock drives the story forward.
I mean, I could have mostly talked about that reveal in this review, but I liked that the creative team gave us enough meat that it’s not just a surprise Transformers book. It’s a genuinely interesting sci-fi action book that appears to have its own plot and story outside the Cybertron of it all. And how successful it is as a series will depend on how it continues to do that, as I’m sure it won’t be long before more familiar Autobot and Decepticon faces show up.
Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.
