Tweet
Micronauts #1
Released by: IDW Publishing
Released on: April 27th, 2016.
Written by: Cullen Bunn
Illustrated by: David Baldeon, Fico Ossio, Max Dunbar, Jack Lawrence
Purchase From Amazon
An entropic wave lays waste to the planet of Saqqura as a race of scientists who have the power to save some of the planets inhabitants only watch - they cannot interfere, only observe. From the safety of the massive mech suit they control, the team of scientists soon learn that the entropic cloud shows signs of intelligence - but when they try to beam off the planet before it is wholly devastated, the robotics that control the mech suits insist that since their findings are being streamed back to headquarters, they shall stay here for the duration. They die, along with the rest of the planet.
On Micropololis-12, a man named Oz, the last of the Pharoids, gets into it with an alien about the travesty that took place on Saqqura, his Micronaut, Acroyear, pulling his sword when it starts to get too heated, despite the protests from his friend, Phenolo-Phi. Oz was just supposed to make a deliver to Hezlee's men, not get into a fight, but he did - and Hezlee isn't happy about it. He takes them into his base to talk about compensation where he introduces them to his new security agent, a woman named Larissa.
After haggling with Oz, he then offers him a new job - it seems that the Ministry Of Defense and the Ministry Of Science aren't getting along… at all. There are innocents being caught in the crossfire. At the Valtricos Research Station, the Baron in charge has put a block on all pharmaceuticals that would normally be shipped out until the Ministry Of Defense is taken out. Since Oz's ship has a Warpcore Drive, Hezlee wants him to go in, get the pharmaceuticals and bring them back to him so he can distribute them and collect a nice profit at the same time. Larissa is to accompany them.
Meanwhile, at the Ministry Of Defense Outpost, Baron Karza has his minions start relocation proceedings to avoid the energy spikes from the encroaching entropic cloud. His wife, Sharazella, encourages him to find a swift resolution to their conflict. There is clearly tension between the two of them. Outside the Valtricos Research Station, however, Oz and his crew - with some help from Microtron - prepare for their landing. They make their way inside to scoop up the prize, but are greeted immediately by a heavily armed and none too friendly welcoming committee of Sentry-Bots!
They make their way through the horde and into a 'robot free zone' where they find a Biotron… with a long dead pilot inside. Once Oz takes out the dead pilot and hops inside to work the Biotron unit, he learns the truth about what's really going on at this research station…
If you're into sci-fi action with liberal doses of humor (think Firefly or some of the lighter Star Wars stories) then you'll probably enjoy this first issue of the new Micronauts series. The older Marvel run seemed to play things a bit more seriously than Bunn's playing them here and David Baldeon's art is completely different from those older early issues drawn so well by Michael Golden, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with these guys putting their own spin on the material. Things will likely get deeper, maybe darker, than they do here - more Baron Karza will probably guarantee that and the whole entropy cloud subplot could take things in that direction too, but the emphasis in this inaugural chapter is on Oz and his team. These guys crack wise but they can handle themselves when it hits the fan. There's enough personality between the characters to make them fun to read about. The artwork, which has a bit of an anime influence at times, is clean, colorful and nicely detailed. Great use of color too. This was a fun read, plenty entertaining and nicely put together.
On top of that we get a text page talking about how the creative team was put together, some notes on the characters from Cullen Bunn's notebooks, and some preliminary character sketches courtesy of David Baldeon and some script pages.
