Written by Claudio Sanchez, Peter David
Drawn by Chris Burnham
Huge hit The Amory Wars comes to BOOM! this spring — right on the heels of creator Claudio Sanchez’s band Coheed and Cambria’s hot new album release Year Of The Black Rainbow this April! For the new The Amory Wars series, Eisner Award-winner Peter David joins this science fiction franchise, so don’t miss out! Heard about the ground-breaking The Amory Wars but never had a chance to get into it? This is a great entry point for new readers — also solicited this month, The Amory Wars Ultimate Edition, collecting the previous two trades published by Image! Created by Claudio Sanchez, lead-singer of Coheed and Cambria!
Follow behind the cut for my thoughts on the issue.
I used to be a really big fan of Coheed and Cambria, but as I grew older I fell out of love with the band. I also found that I did not really enjoy any of the comic adaptations, whether it be the first attempt Claudio did with Evil Ink Comics or even the re-try on Image. However, when I heard that Peter David was coming along to take care of writing duties, I got really excited.
Well, congratulations Peter David. You write a better Coheed and Cambria than Claudio Sanchez does.
This issue has to pick up the pieces from the last series, which was written by Sanchez, was rather disjointed, and was published on Image. Somehow, David manages to take a lot of loose elements, streamline them, and make sense of them as we catch up in this issue. On top of that, the major players are all introduced right off the bat, and for those familiar with the album, it all becomes easily recognizable (such as Al the Killer!), from the moment Claudio says, “Hello, Apollo. Where should I begin?” That moment right there was one of the moments where I had a lot of faith in the story, and as it turns out my faith was rewarded.
Chris Burnham’s artwork is also promising. Some artistic choices he makes are odd, such as having backgrounds disappear in certain panels, but his characters do look even. I was really excited to see Al The Killer, whom I did not suspect would look as he appeared, but his design is cool. While there is some inconsistency between how characters look between this and the previous volume, such as Apollo, most of the characters look normal and steady. Claudio, with his long coat and beard, looks great, and his design is perfect for the morose sort of hero that he needs to be. While I’m not familiar with Burnham in any other comic book, I’m interested to see how his art plays out in future issues.
(Although the final monster with the crotchmouth-tongue thing is a bit odd.)
Needless to say, I am actually excited about something related to Coheed and Cambria, which probably hasn’t been the case since 2006/2007. Peter David has definitely given life to the issue and set up the pieces necessary for the rest of the story to take place. It will be very interesting to see how familiar to the later issues play with the assumed story contained from listening to the lyrics, but I can easily say that I am looking forward to picking up the rest of the issues.
Final Verdict: 8.3 – Buy
