“Onyx”

With roots in that sort of ’80s military science fiction action set, “Onyx” bursts on the scene with plenty of pyrotechnics, crazy monsters, rough heroes, and world-ending stakes. In 100 pages, creators Chris Ryall and Gabriel Rodriguez throw everything they can at the page, and the whole thing comes off as sort of . . . a mess.

Written by Chris Ryall
Illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez and Jay Fotos

From deepest space comes the cyborg warrior Onyx… but has she come to Earth in its time of dire need to save it or to end it? A star-born knight for a new generation takes flight here!

There’s a lot of recognizable elements throughout “Onyx.” You have this group of secret military commandoes (a la Predator or Aliens), an insidious parasitic infection (flashes of The Thing), and plenty of heavy artillery. You even have the big bad saying he won’t get distracted and make the mistake of monologuing — which has probably become an even bigger clichŽ than a bad guy actually launching into a monologue. If it showed up in some old ’80s sci-fi action movie, there’s a good chance that writer/IDW Editor-in-Chief Chris Ryall and artist Gabriel Rodriguez threw it into their book. Unfortunately, they seemed so concerned with making something that looked cool that they sort of forgot to do anything with the characters, and “Onyx” ends up a floundering, sputtering, and worst of all, boring book.

Ryall and Rodriguez tell the story of a cyborg woman named Onyx who, after her planet has been destroyed by this spore parasite travels across the universe trying to purge it from existence. Both she and the spore end up on Earth, but find that humans have been running tests on it or something, creating these hybrid horror creatures.

“Onyx” sports a broad cast but a modest length (originally serialized in four issues, this collection also includes a short prologue to help set the scene). Most of the page count is devoted to action, and Rodriguez does turn in a few noteworthy spreads. Scenes where one character’s telepathy kicks up and bend the fabric of reality are cool. But with all that going on, there’s really nothing happening with these characters. For the majority of their time, they’re yelling or shooting things; they sort of blend into one another, despite Rodriguez’s clear attempts to give them distinct features. Ryall doesn’t rely on archetypes to give these characters any sort of agency, as much as he leans on straight-on clichŽs. If these people were more archetypical or even stereotypical they might at least have something for us to latch onto, but they’re just bland.

The basic characterization doesn’t help the action scenes either. Ryall and Rodriguez throw these people into sequence after sequence, with laser blades flying and monstrous animal jaws chomping and people unloading so many magazines you’d think the jungle was more lead than wood, but without any characters to latch onto, these just become a mess of carnage. You could argue that we have Onyx and that telepathic girl, but Ryall and Rodriguez set them up as outsiders to be observed, and they just aren’t interesting enough to carry this book. The world endangering stakes fail to add any tension, either. Honestly, they might undermine any intensity in the narrative to begin with.

Normally, Rodriguez is a super strong artist. We could write about “Locke & Key” until our dissertations outpage the actual comic. His work with Eric Shanower last year on “Little Nemo: Return to Slumberland” provided a breathtaking view of Winsor McCay’s dream world, but here, he sort of phones it in. If clarity was prized in his previous outings, he devolves into an incomprehensible mess of images for this one. His character expressions never seem on point, and it feels like he was so excited to get to the monsters and the creatures, he shucked off everything else he needed to make the book effective. A lot of the time, this book looked ugly.

Short and messy, “Onyx” promises a lot of things, but never delivers any of it. The script is rough, the art never quite lands (though Rodriguez does provide a few well delivered spreads from time to time), but, worst of all, with overly broad stakes and basic bland characters, the book is boring and forgettable.

Final Verdict: 4.8