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McHenry, Bob; Blackthorn, Alister; McHenry, Molly – Mixmen Hyperworld #1

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Mixmen Hyperworld #1

I should make one thing clear early on in this review: this comic series is more or less intended to be an origin story of sorts for characters and settings that are going to be used in a tabletop game that the creators of this comic is putting together. I’m still going to judge the comic on its merits, but it should be noted that the people responsible for this have big plans and show every sign of having their act together enough to make this happen. That being said, this is a #1 of a series and there’s still no #2 listed on the website. Let’s just say that I’ve learned to take this sort of thing with a grain of salt over the years until I see tangible proof that things are progressing. Anyway! This is the story of a planet that was terraformed (for lack of a better word; giant aliens put this planet together seemingly from scratch) for the purpose of being used as a prison planet. There were three zones and one warden (i.e. character with super powers) was put in charge of each zone. As time went on the population exploded, necessitating several more wardens, and after many years pass the place seems to be clearly broken down into three groups: the dominant group, the “police,” and the scholars. All this information is neatly laid out before we meet the hero of the story, or at least our introduction to this world: Takota, a “recycled” former warden. We also get to see him trying to figure out his powers, which was handled about as well as I’ve seen in comics. The guy was delightfully out of his league in testing his limits and it was nice to see our hero being fallible right off the bat. Yes, I may have seen one too many “instant savior” science fiction movies over the years. I still have lots of questions after reading this, but the creators seem very aware of potential questions and sure seem like they know what they’re doing. I’m hoping for the best, as this series intrigues me, but one issue isn’t really enough to judge a series one way or the other. I think it’s worth a look, although $7.50 for a comic seems a little expensive to me. At least you can get it for $5 from a convention, so try to find them there.

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