Echo Gear is not your typical comic book. In fact, I have a hard time even calling it a comic book because it’s really just doing its own thing. To be upfront about it, I have no idea what this issue is about. It’s so experimental with its storytelling that for me, the story is completely lost. Instead, it’s a picture book with random narrative captions that sometimes tell a cohesive story, but clearly they’re not all talking about the same story. There are no real panels for this comics, just full pages of art which objects that occasionally act as framing and nothing more. The art is good. I don’t know how much of it is photo referenced and how much is illustrated, but it’s good either way. The art is talented for sure, but it’s not telling a story. Not in the slightest.

That’s the really difficult part, without knowing if there is a story to be missed how can I say it’s missing one? In the end, Echo Gear really just feels like a book of designs with some narration occasionally added to it. None of the narration is particularly good or captures your imagination, but it’s definitely there trying to do something.

That seems to be Echo Gear’s biggest problem. Effort. There’s a lot of effort on the art, on being different on breaking the storytelling mold, but none of it is particularly successful, especially those last two. If you want something different in comics, there’s plenty out there and even more if you want comics that are breaking the storytelling mold. This isn’t it. I don’t know what Echo Gear’s goal is, but it was the least inviting comic I’ve read in a long while and I won’t be back for more.

Score: 1/5

Echo Gear #1 Creator: Vincent Sammy Publisher: Rosarium Publishing Price: $3.99 Format: Print/Digital