With a new season coming to Netflix next week, Lion Forge Studios is bringing us another volume of Voltron Legendary Defender comics. What new adventures await our paladins? Let’s find out.
Written by Tim Hendrick & Mitch Iverson
Illustrated by Jung Gwan Yoo
Colored by Ji-In Choi
Lettered by Andworld DesignThe Voltron paladins respond to a distress call and discover a group of alien settlers on a mining planet under attack by the Galra. But the attempted rescue is only the beginning of more exciting Voltron adventures from Tim Hedrick and Mitch Iverson, writers on the hit DreamWorks series on Netflix.
Voltron Legendary Defender has had an odd year. After season 3 notably having more mixed reactions from the fanbase for multiple reasons (storytelling not as consistent, certain characters becoming more sidelines), we’re now on the eve of season 4 (or “season 3.5” depending on who you ask) and with that brings another tie-in miniseries from Lion Forge Studios from the pen of two of the writers of the Netflix show to tell a little tale between episodes.
First off, a small thing here: the numbering. I rambled about this in my “The Evil Within” review from a couple weeks ago about Titan’s odd choice of numbering to signify a new miniseries and how it would just cause confusion. Here you have it really simple on the cover: “Vol. 2 No. 1”. It’s a much more concise way to label your miniseries for readers that aren’t hardcore followers of comics (which is smart, to be fair). While I’m talking about the top left corner of the cover, might as well talk about the rest of it. Artist Jung Gwan Yoo provides a simple cover, however -and I’ll talk about this more later- the style seeks to imitate the style of the show, but it’s just different enough to have its own flavor.
Now onto the story. A benefit of these tie-in comics is that it can give characters that were either side characters or characters that feel like they’ve been shunted to the side. This is why the opening scene of this story got me excited. Why? Because it was focused around Hunk! Poor Hunk. He’s the Bray Wyatt of the group. Not that he’s some mad cult leader, obviously (although, I don’t know what he does on his days off), but that out of all the main cast, he feels like he’s got more and more maligned and, consequently, his character at times could feel one dimensional. So having this issue open with Hunk training with Pidge in using his senses to his advantages got my hopes up. Albeit, it tied into Hunk’s love of food, which seems to be his one trait, but still, it got me excited.
Yeah, if you can judge by the tone being written, that’s not the case. It’s not a Hunk-centric story. You set me up comic. You vile, wicked thing! No, just joking. Instead, we have a story of the Paladins trying to liberate another planet from the Galra Empire and free its people, the Daydabhau. And it goes poorly. The Paladins are overrun, even with Voltron and it causes an evacuation of the planet and the children of the Daydabhau’s now dead King asking the Paladins if they will help them find a new home. It provides an interesting premise, something beyond just simple “fight Galra” trap that the show could run into.
Credit to Hendrick and Iverson; while we don’t learn much about the Daydabhau, the writers do provide just enough about their culture, their nomadic tendencies, their concept of an afterlife and such. It’s nothing to drown in, but it’s enough to get a sense of history behind these people and what they’ve been enduring fighting the Galra. Beyond that, the characterization of the Paladins is kept simple and making it very familiar to those who watch the show.
Back to the artwork. As I said when talking about the cover, the art does a good job of imitating the style from the show without feeling completely beholden to it, a problem I felt was rampant in the previous miniseries. Yoo and colorist Ji-In Choi feel a bit more loose with their style, along for a good deal of fun emotional character beats, such as when Pidge makes fun of Coran for catching the eye of one of the Daydabhau shamanesses. There is also a moment where Voltron disassembles back into the lions and the machine performs this kind of spin motion and I’m not gonna lie, I found it a bit amusing.
Continued belowChoi’s coloring is interesting because it never loses its vibrancy but it the “lighting” of a scene does a great job of changing with the tone, if that makes sense. For example, the aforementioned Hunk and Pidge training scene is shown in a very bright and chipper atmosphere. Contrast that with the aftermath of the battle with a more somber mood lighting. Neither feel out of place in the book and help emphasize this series can get grim without being gratuitous.
While not the character-focused start I was hoping those first few pages teased, “Voltron Legendary Defender Vol 2” #1 does provide an interesting premise for its miniseries. The idea of trying to find peace in a galaxy so damaged by war and finding a new place to call home is an interesting one that I really feel that the creative team can do a lot with in the next coming issues. If anything, this mini seems poised to provide a decent sidestory in the wait for season 4.
Final Verdict: 7.0- A good, if basic, start to a mini-series that has a potentially interesting topic as its focus.
