By Cat Wyatt
Portal Bound continues the unique tale started in the first issue. Princess Sybil has come to our earth in hopes of finding her counterpart on this world, which she did fairly quickly. He’s a teenager with no combat training, and his name is Elias. So not exactly the savior Sybil was hoping to find, but it could be worse I suppose; at least they still appear to have the ability to combine (or whatever I should be calling it).
After the dramatic events of the last issue, it isn’t surprising that Elias wakes up in bed, slightly injured, and totally exhausted. Apparently, Sybil carried him all the way home (with Brett leading the way)…strong girl, right? Unfortunately, Sybil appears to have hung around, something I feel like Elias would have preferred to not be the case. However, being that she found him it’s unlikely she’ll be leaving him anytime soon, which is a problem considering how different they are from each other.
Where Sybil is strong, independent, and well trained for being a fighter, Elias is intelligent, a little introverted, and not inclined for this fighting thing. Sure, he’ll happily collect replica swords, but that’s totally different. Needless to say…Sybil didn’t waste any time finding, being disappointed in, and breaking Elias’ ‘pathetic’ swords…this didn’t endear her any to Elias (duh).
Somehow Sybil manages to convince Elias to come along on her quest…though, to be honest, I think he mostly agreed to get her to leave him alone (his mother wasn’t exactly thrilled to find Sybil in his room, though he did an okay job coming up with an excuse for it). Brett is a bit more enthusiastic about the mission, which makes sense since he’s not the one that’ll have to be fighting (nor does he have to connect with Sybil the same way).
Meanwhile back on Sybil’s homeworld, it’s revealed that her father has sent a bunch of bounty hunters after her and Riley (the scientist that can build, open, and close portals). And by a bunch of bounty hunters, I pretty much mean all of them. On the bright side, he’s ordered them to bring both girls back alive (obviously there’s no mention of Eli or Brett, so they’d likely be casualties as far as the bounty hunters are concerned).
This wouldn’t normally be a big concern for Riley since she’s pretty good at shielding and covering her tracks, but with the massive power drain, the portal causes…well… it’s likely that everyone knows exactly where she is. And she can’t exactly leave, can she? Not when Sybil could be trying to get home any minute now.
There’s one problem with Sybil getting home (along with her…backup…). The portal got destroyed during her fight the night before. Now, Riley did explain a way to open it back up from her side, but Sybil isn’t exactly the type to listen. Thankfully coding is a universal language, and Eli is able to sort things out. It’s pretty impressive actually (also, I totally want to know what coding language is used…because you know, there’s more than one…and I’m curious about that sort of thing).
Eli’s ability to fix the portal goes further in pointing out the differences between our two main characters. Besides from the obvious (and the stuff I already listed) I honestly don’t think they could be any more different from each other. The only thing they have in common is that they don’t want her father to win this war (a war which Eli doesn’t understand just yet).
Riley is quick to pick up on the differences as well, once they come through the portal. Her blatant statements of the obvious make me like her even more than I already did. I’m not going to lie; I was half expecting them to reveal that Riley and Brett were counters to each other, resulting in them bonding like Eli and Sybil, but that didn’t end up happening.
This is a fascinating series. I think they’re having some show/tell issues, as they keep telling us important plot points rather than letting us see/figure it out for ourselves. Some of the plot points so far have been obvious or a little contrived, but on the whole, it’s been pretty fun and interesting.
I love the bold art style for this series. There are bright colors, bold and defined lines, and all details are shown for stylistic purposes. I like the character design for Sybil best, but that was likely intentional.
Score: 3/5
Portal Bound #2
Aspen Comics