“The actions of one are the actions of all.” Set in the dystopian, walled off, steampunk city of the title, “Lantern City” #1 follows the journey of one man who sparks a rebellion against a tyrannical order in order to protect his family.
Read on below for our spoiler free review of “Lantern City” #1 to find out why you should by checking this book out.
Written by Paul Jenkins & Matthew Daley
Illustrated by Carlos Magno
What’s to Love: From the writings of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells to comics like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Lady Mechanika, the detailed and imagination-fueled steampunk movement has excited fans worldwide. Set in an original, sprawling steampunk world, Lantern City explores everything we love about the genre and what it takes to change a person’s place in the world.What It Is: Sander Jorve just wants to keep his wife and son safe. Living in the brutalized lower class of Lantern City means living in near constant darkness, the enormous walls of the city always looming overhead, while the upper class enjoys the elevated, interconnected towers and airships above. When Sander’s brother-in-law, the persuasive activist Kendal, convinces him to infiltrate the brutal ranks of the Guard, he’s set on a dangerous path that will test his abilities and beliefs, all in the name of making a difference for his family and his caste.
The idea of steampunk as a subgenre of fantasy fiction has, I’ve found, often been pretty polarising. Either you’re a part of the steampunk culture and you embrace the aesthetic of the fiction and the worlds or you roll your eyes because you just saw another person walk past you at a comic con with a top hat, waistcoat and brass goggles. However, I’ve always found there to be an untapped potential in the genre. Looking to its cousin genre, cyberpunk, there’s a focus on using the often dystopian setting and the technology of the world to comment on our world and it’s problems. That’s something I’ve rarely seen delved into with cyberpunk as most works get caught up on the surface of exploring how far they can stretch the aesthetic.
“Lantern City” isn’t like that. The world of “Lantern City” was created by Trevor Crafts, Matthew Daley and Bruce Boxleitner and what we see here in this issue, as told be Daley, Paul Jenkins and Carlos Magno, is the life of one man struggling against the system. We’re introduced to Sander Jorve as he works the fields of Lantern City with his partner and are accosted and beaten by the red-suited, masked guards of the city for singing on the job. This immediately sets the tone for a story that examines the life of a man struggling to get by in a system stacked against him while the story of the issue examines the breaking point that leads to that man joining the rebellion against the system.
What makes “Lantern City” work is the surprisingly depth of material that writers Matthew Daley and Paul Jenkins infuse the issue with. With this being a first issue, the story could have been easily overrun by introducing the reader to the world and to the city and to the characters with little space left to introduce the actual story. Daley and Jenkins balance that by keeping Jovre at the centre of everything happening throughout the issue and so anything we learn about Lantern City comes directly from his experiences. That means when we see him beaten for the mistakes of another or having to survive on rations that can’t feed his whole family, it makes us sympathise with him and makes his actions towards the end of the issue have weight. Not only that, but we sympathise with Jovre’s plight because his troubles are real world troubles, albeit juxtaposed against a fantastical setting, and Daley and Jenkins play that perfectly.
The beauty of “Lantern City”, though, comes from the art by Carlos Magno. Magno’s art is dark and dingy and his lines are harsh and detailed and it brings the overcrowded, steampunk world of Lantern City to life. It also brings a lot of depth to the world as, while Jovre’s narration provides us with information about the world that we don’t see, Magno provides a look into a lived-in world of oppression through what we do see. Jovre’s world is one where the streets are cloud in steam and smog, lit by lanterns because the buildings around them are too tall to let any sunlight in and framed with posters encouraging hard work through various ominous slogans.
Continued belowMixed with the earth colour palette that make up most of Lantern City by colourist Chris Blythe, Magno’s art speaks to a life in a place that is harsh and overbearing and fights perfectly with a story about surviving under a classist oppression. However, it’s not all darkness and grimness. There’s moments of beauty and brightness, with vibrant colours representing both the unobtainable freedom of the lush fields Jovre is forced to work in and and bright red uniforms of the ever present guard. Okay, so maybe not beautiful as such, but the colour work certainly isn’t quite as grim as you’d expect and that made for a pleasant surprise and a luscious world to explore through the art.
All in all, “a pleasant surprise” is definitely how I’d describe “Lantern City” #1 as a whole. Jenkins, Daley and Magno have taken a genre that could easily just coast along on the strength of its visual aesthetic alone and instead have infused it with depth and character and pathos. The world of “Lantern City” is fascinating to explore with a lot of depth that is alluded and is gorgeously represented by Carlos Magno and Chris Blythe, but at the heart of it all the story of a struggle that is all too real and the characters affected by it.
Final Verdict: 7.6 – A well done first issue with a lot of interesting ideas bubbling under the surface – “Lantern City” has lot of potential to go great places.
