Ludtke, Jason – Colossal #1: Feathers and Composite Armour

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Colossal #1: Feather and Composite Armour

I’ll say one thing for Jason: the man knows how to set a scene. This is the first of three comics in this series, so naturally setting the scene is damned important. He can’t give too much away or risk ruining future surprises and he can’t give too little away or he’ll risk alienating those short attention span folks who can’t live without their phone being within reach at all times. Go on, admit it, you were checking a text during that last sentence. Anyway, this comic opens up with a wide shot of a field, and from there we slowly move into a forest. We see sharp angles, the hint of something huge, and finally a hand on the ground. A display area on the hand opens up, we get a clear indication of what’s happening (I don’t want to spell the whole thing out for you), and finally the title character is revealed, roughly halfway through the comic. The rest of the comic is a conversation between our hero (as far as I know; it may turn out to be the destroyer of all humanity before the series is done) and a bird that happens across it, as they try to determine just what sort of creature it is. It has amnesia, you see, which can be a lazy trope to explain that part of the story… unless it’s done well. And this thing is clearly at least part robot, so amnesia could just be a programming thing. I’m intrigued, which is all that’s required out of the first issue of a longer series. The panel structure was a bit clunky at times, as some bits of foliage stopped when the panel stopped and others kept going, making their conversation occasionally difficult to follow, but that’s a minor quibble. $2.50