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The Clockwork Girl
Book Released: 24 Oct 2007
Posted 31 Oct 2007
Writer: Sean O'Reilly, Kevin Hanna
Artist: Grant Bond, Kevin Hanna
Artist: Grant Bond (cover)
Letters: Shawn Depasquale
Publisher: Arcana Studios
2.50 out of 5 Stars
Reviewed by Louis Vitela
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I hate first issues. I occasionally say this aloud in my comic shop
and invariably find myself at the center of a sudden, horrified
silence from the patrons around me. I break the silence by explaining
myself: I read comics for the stories, and there’s too often too
little story in a first issue. Much of the time a first issue’s pages
will be taken up with setting or exposition and by the time I’ve
reached the back cover I’m left with no story and not much reason to
consider buying the second issue. Unfortunately, The Clockwork
Girl is in this category for me.
“A curb-hanger rather than a cliff-hanger, The Clockwork Girl
ends with very little to propel readers to the next issue.”
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The readers are introduced to the story via the trite but quaint
phrase, “In a land far, far away…” after which we
are immediately verbally bludgeoned with the proposed theme: the power
of nature versus the power of technology. While not a flagrant misuse
of the comics medium, why not let the reader glean the theme from the
story and the dialogue rather than blurting it out? Also, the theme
as stated is not terribly well supported, at least in this first
issue. The characters who are meant to champion each side of the
theme are themselves both scientists and creators and seem far too
similar to represent opposing forces. The overriding theme is more
likely Man as Creator, a powerful theme that recurs often in
literature and myth (Shelley’s Frankenstein and the Greek
myth of Pygmalion come to mind).
For the most part, the characters in Clockwork Girl only
pretend to have depth and never move beyond the gleeful mad scientist
persona. Indeed, this comic sports a roomful of mad scientists, each
clad in a double-breasted lab coat and rubber gauntlets, itself pretty
amusing. Although scientist Dendrus (champion of nature, as per the
theme) will possibly prove to be the more level-headed of the bunch,
he’s still the ethically-challenged creator of Huxley the
Amazing Monster Boy. The reader is immediately sympathetic to Huxley
in that his only crime is having been created. I found myself not so
sympathetic to Dendrus: he created the boy, gave him the features of a
werewolf, dubbed him The Amazing Monster Boy, paraded the boy as an
invention, and then appeared to take some unspecified moral high
ground opposite his foe, Wilhelm (champion of technology and creator
of the Clockwork Girl). If it appeared the writers planned to address
these conundrums in the course of the story, it would give the
character a great deal of depth. It instead appears from this first
issue that they’ve not thought the character out very well.
Much better than the story is the art, which I enjoyed immensely.
Visually, the characters are rendered in an appealing cartoony style
which allows for a great deal of expressiveness. While The
Clockwork Girl is anything but wordy, the panels are so well
thought out and the characters’ expressions are so well drawn
that the story might have worked as well or better with no dialogue at
all.
A curb-hanger rather than a cliff-hanger, The Clockwork Girl
ends with very little to propel readers to the next issue. I was left
with the impression that Monster Boy and Clockwork Girl will simply
become sweethearts in a couple of issues with no further strife, and
no apparent story to tell. Despite my concerns, I think there is
potential here, and I’ll almost certainly buy the next issue to
see if the story picks up before the fourth and final issue rolls
around.
—CCdC—
Cover image used without explicit permission in accordance with the "Fair Use" provision of US copyright law.
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