This Wednesday, Top Cow is launching a new series written by Rob Levin and Bryan Edward Hill and illustrated by Allesandro Vitti. That title is Broken Trinity: Pandora’s Box, and it is part of a grand scheme by Top Cow to make their universe a more cohesive whole (ala any major event comic anyone else does).
We have an advance review of that series’ debut issue up after the jump.
This issue was touted as being “a good balance of ground level read for new fans and pay off for continuing Top Cow Universe stories for long time readers” by Top Cow themselves. In a lot of ways that is true, as I’m a new reader of the series and for the most part, I understood what was going on. Rob Levin and Bryan Edward Hill for the most part do a good job of setting up the story without burdening long time readers with too much exposition. Right off the bat, we’re introduced to the main characters Glori and Finn and are invited into this world quite ably by Levin and Hill.
However, from a writing standpoint, the character Elias and his Disciples of Adam are a complete enigma. He’s randomly introduced in pages 6 and 7 along with his people, and we really have no idea what is going on but we can only assume additional exposition is coming. Instead pages 10 through 16 are a bloodbath incited by these people and I’m left as a completely fresh reader confused as to who these Disciples of Adam people are and why they hate Russian Orthodox people so much.
The one thing going in that I knew for sure about this book was that I would enjoy the art. Allesandro Vitti’s art was a very worthy subtitute for Stefano Caselli on Secret Warriors, and in this title he is given a lot of opportunity to stretch his legs. His action sequences are dynamic and packed with energy, his more quiet moments are packed with fantastic character models and rich detail…this guy is a budding star. I really like his work. Throw in a phenomenal cover from Tommy Lee Edwards and you’ve got a pretty damn attractive book.
So what kind of grade do you give a book that is 70% good, 30% not so good from a writing standpoint and all good from art? I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt for the first issue, as it did a good job of setting up an intriguing globe spanning adventure in the next five issues. A solid…
Final Verdict: 7.2 – Buy
