There are ships or portals in the sky producing monstrous green beings who are swimming towards the land. In an abandoned city, an old man and his dog scavenge for food before leaving the dark, lonely city that is being watched over by an empty mech. It was an awesome and intriguing few pages, a shame the comic continued after that. Following that awesome intro we meet peppy cop and super serious cop. Two characters so aggravating I didn’t learn their names. The two spend page upon page upon page bickering over whether they even like each other or not. Peppy cop is chipper and friendly and is hated by super serious cop because she didn’t start from the lower ranks but became a flying cop right away. Expect their sitcom soon.

These two cops randomly explain away a lot of the world while they fly around in their flying car. They also act super annoying. Super serious cop is even more aggravated than normally because the duo has to take on a mechanism on a ride along. The mechanism is a new generation human-sized robot with the powers of a mech. Said mechanism never really talks or does anything, so don’t go in expecting a lot from the title character.

This comic also features two completely random flashbacks! Both with no set up. One of them explains where the mechanism came from, the other shows the old man as a child shooting his friend or brother. Both come out of left field. So once the story has shown it will flashback out of nowhere, it makes sense that the more personal stories would have flashbacks, right? Wrong! The old man talks about his time in the war as a mech pilot… and we just see him talking about it. Who wants to see him in a mech when we can just watch him talk about it? Glad I got to see him accidentally shoot someone, though. It added so much to the story…

The issue ends with all of the characters coming together. The cops pulling over the old man and then all of them getting attacked by the monsters from the beginning (they are called geckos, by the way). This is where things should ramp up, but really it feels flat. There’s a death, and yelling, and I guess character moments, but none of it is earned or feels genuine. What’s worse is the last two pages are a spread where there’s two tiny panels on each page where you can see the action and this huge spread of a gecko moving forward. I think it is supposed to be artsy or cool, but it felt really cheesy, which really defines this issue as a whole.

The art itself is pretty good. The colors are wonderful, and the end scene features rain that is just pretty to look at. Otherwise the character design is generic, while the monsters and mechs look awesome. There’s a lot of seemingly random facial expressions, though, which kind of bothers me. But really the art is the biggest redeeming factor here. Maybe once we move into the story proper it will be good, now that we are down at least one character? I’m not too hopeful. The issue is just a disjointed mess after the first few pages. If only we could return to just those pages and start from there…

[su_box title="Score: 1/5" style="glass" box_color="#8955ab" radius="6"]

Mechanism #1 Writer/Artist/Creator/Letterer: Raffaele Ienco Publisher: Image/Top Cow Price: $3.99 Format: Print/Digital

[/su_box]