Radiant Comics

I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got two new comic plus a hard cover collection:

And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

Oddly enough I wasn’t too hopeful about this book. I was a little disappointed by Motter’s last Mr. X book from 2009. It wasn’t horrible but I found it lackluster. This one looked similar to that one but in the end was better. I almost didn’t buy it but am glad I did.

Electropolis is one of those comics that reads better than it looks. That means that in just flipping through it I wasn’t so impressed by the artwork but in reading it I was. The entire story telling package drew me in and the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. That’s why I try not to judge a comic until I actually read it. Even if the art may look lackluster to my eye initially until I “read” the art I don’t really know.

Electropolis takes place in the same world as Mr. X except it doesn’t take place in his home city, Somnopolis, but in a sister city called Electropolis. It’s a mystery story in the hard boiled detective tradition. The twist is that the detective is a robot. There is a human detective as the other main character plus a cast of outcasts, criminals, and cops. Mr. X also makes an appearence.

There is a sense of humor to the story but it also takes itself seriously. That’s not an easy thing to do. I often find one gets in the way of the other but things work together smoothly here.

I still don’t like Motter’s lettering on this book but that is my only real complaint. Well, that and a format gripe. I’d prefer if thi book were the full size US size comic rather than the smaller dimentioned Japanese size comic. I don’t care about pocketabity. I want big art.

Anyway, I did enjoy this book. It told a good story with a nice sense of style. Give it a read.