The first issue of this ongoing from Image kicked off a blistering, brutal journey. We followed Sym, a living, breathing force of destruction who was sent back to the beginning of time to kill her creator’s enemies. And while there appears to have been a miscalculation – Sym showed up a little too early, or in the wrong place – this issue shows that nothing will slow her down as she cuts a deadly swath through history.
Written by Ryan Burton
Illustrated by John BivensSym is worshiped as the Eater of Hearts and the Dark Engine learns the pleasures of being a feared god.
If you’re some kind of chaotic force, and you wear a dinosaur skull on your head, and you show up in ancient Egypt — well, there are going to be some misunderstandings. In this case, Sym gets mistaken for the god Ammut, the being who eats your heart if you don’t make it into the afterlife. And, for a brief time, she is held captive, with visitors taking a good sip of psychotropic tea before clapping eyes on her. In the mean time, we pay an expository visit the Alchemist’s Tower, learning about the deadly spores that plague Sym’s creators; and then we see Sym moving on from her current circumstances.
It doesn’t sound like much plot, but it’s densely laid out. We don’t stay with any one scene for long, so there are several moments where you have to pause and parse out a particular line of dialogue. In fact, the very first scene of the issue – one involving a demon character – is still a bit obscure in terms of its direct implications for the story; but this character also opened the first issue, so clearly this is one of those repeating interludes that leads to a crescendo somewhere down the line.
All the while, Kelly Fitzpatrick’s colours are diverse, ably managing the changes in setting; but they only really step to the forefront during the Alchemist’s Tower scene. Here, the acid green of the background adds a lot of punch to the pages, acting like a shot of adrenaline after the sepia tones of the Egyptian sequence.
Ryan Burton’s captions never overexplain, and in the case of the demon character, they even skew Lovecraftian. Picking up where the art leaves off, they suggest, in baroque terms, the organic, rotting quality of this character’s environment. And I don’t mean to say that John Bivens’ art is underwhelming. It’s the opposite, filling each page with hunks of flesh, haggard faces, and crumbling scenery. The magic here is that it’s difficult for art to suggest the unknowable, the unthinkable, and all those other great “un”s that punctuate this kind of story; and when the captions show up with their well-chosen adjectives, they do that job beautifully.
The impression that Bivens’ art leaves you with is undoubtedly that of fleshiness. There’s viscera to be found everywhere you look, and if anybody can make stretches of tendon and gristle poetic, it’ll be Bivens. The prevalence of gore in the story, of course, underscores the violence and brutality of Sym’s journey; but the up-close way it’s rendered adds another layer, a certain reverence. We wouldn’t be reading this comic if there weren’t something compelling about Sym’s journey, and with ragged but precise lines and bold camera angle choices, Bivens capitalizes on this story’s primal appeal. Matters do sometimes go a little too far in that direction; the final splash page, for instance, doesn’t scan well, with the camera standing a little too close for us to quickly make sense of the image. But then, that’s a fairly minor flaw in a visually spectacular issue.
The final page is actually our only glimpse of Sym for the entirety of this chapter; that is, if visions aided by psychotropic tea don’t count. But this feels like a smart choice, preserving a sense of grandeur and mystery about the character. We’re learning more about the lives she’s stampeding through than hers; witnessing her deeds rather than excavating, at this early moment, what exactly goes on in her mind.
At the end of the issue, Sym shows up in another very recognizable place and time. And if there’s any tendency in the writing that feels a little cheap, it’s this preference for iconic moments in history that readers will recognize right away. But then, considering the overall density of this series, maybe this tendency is for the best. And thanks to Bivens’ art, we know that any period of time we visit from here on will look gorgeously alien.
If you’re a fan of fellow Image Comic “Sovereign”, it’s fairly safe to put your money on this title. While “Dark Engine” is much more nihilistic – not to mention gory – its scale and grandeur and density make it another epic story that challenges and rewards at the same time. It is hard to say, at this early point, whether the story has the meat and tenacity to stay interesting in the long term; it could, after all, go on repeating the same formula that structured the first two issues. But for now, there’s no denying the uniqueness of this concept and the flair with which it’s being executed. There’s nothing like watching a vicious character set history on fire; and even if that’s an itch you don’t think you have, you’ll get it scratched when you read “Dark Engine”.
Final Verdict: 8.3 – Buy
