I’m going to rant for a moment. I’m not a fan of any comic that puts the creator’s name before the title. I don’t know if that’s a way to avoid lawsuits with something else of the same name, but I personally dislike it. I’m never going say the full title that way and frankly I doubt many people care. It makes your book sound more like a piece of armor I’ve found in an RPG than a comic title. I’m sure there’s a reason for it, but at the end of the day it makes you look arrogant. Like you needed your name on the book in a bigger than credit type way and this goes for any series that does this, not just Tyson Hesse’s Diesel. UPDATE: Just wanted to clear up the last paragraph, I'm by no means attacking the creator, but rather just soap boxing. I re-read it and it sounds attacky and I didn't mean for it be specifically directed at this series. Also, as I suspected there was a good reason for Tyson Hesse's name to be added to the title.
The story is about a flying city boat called Peacetowne. We meet Dee Diesel, a young girl about to turn 18 and when she does she’ll inherit the ship per her father’s Will. We quickly see that she’s annoying as she heads to the bridge and pretends to be captain of the ship. Eventually she’s kicked out and heads back down to her work station in the garage. They head into a storm and Dee gets in the way and kicked off the bridge… again. Oh and she might have a power that her father likely didn’t tell her about to protect her.
The main reason I checked out this issue was because of the art. I love the manga/anime influenced style. It has a rich animated look and was the best part of the issue. I’m going to talk about it before I dive into the story. A lot of the characters seemed Muppet inspired, but more along the lines of Jim Henson’s Dark Crystal stuff. Oh and no Jim Henson doesn’t get a free pass on putting his name before titles either. Anyway, the art has clean line work and flows very well. I can’t stress enough how much this looks like a storyboard for an animation.
As for the writing. There’s some infodumps. There not too bad, but it’s very obvious that each scene has an agenda of information that it’s looking to give the reader. Towards the end of the issue I became confused about what I was witnessing and no one wanted to say anything. Then we just follow Dee as she discovers her power. I get that everything couldn’t be revealed, but there’s some pretty big holes in our knowledge of what’s going on in the issue.
There were some funny moments… at first. Then the book and all the characters became a bit too “on” all the time. That is to say that everyone is looking to crack a joke and get a dig in on Dee and she’s always looking to give a dig back. It’s tiring reading dialogue like that because no one is like that all the time and if they are, well most people would eventually stop talking to them. My point is, the comedy got old quickly and didn’t do anything to refresh itself.
It’s not a terrible issue, it’s just pretty average. With it only being four issues there’s a strong chance I’ll check out the entire series. I just hope that it’s not one of those stories that’s written for the trade because then there won’t be much point in checking out the single issues. At least the art is really good and hopefully the story will get there as well.
Score: 3/5
Tyson Hesse’s Diesel #1 Writer/Artist/Creator: Tyson Hesse Publisher: BOOM!/Boom Box Price: $3.99 Release Date: 9/9/15 Format: Mini-Series; Print/Digital