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hollowspine's review
2.0
A generous two stars, for this mostly uninspired collection of steampunkish comics. The art often wasn't in a style I enjoyed or seemed a bit rough. While some stories were so packed with steampunk gears, goggles and what-not there was little room for character or story, others didn't seem to fit into the collection at all. Few were worth the price of admission (my time).
I also was hounded throughout the collection by the fact that there were few women represented, and the few that were, weren't represented well. I took exception with the first comic especially. It featured what is beginning to be an archetypal role for women in steampunk literature. A girl posing as a boy. This was by far the weakest attempt I've ever seen. From her hairstyle to her accessorizing (yes, accessorizing) it wouldn't take Sherlock Holmes to uncover her 'secret.' There are many awesome examples (both fictional and factual) about women masquerading as men that the comic became a bit insulting, drawing the character as if she just pulled on her brother's old uniform (which fit despite the inherent differences in women and men's physical shapes?) and thought that'd do the trick and completely ignoring the real struggle and fear women donning men's clothing often face. And then having the dashing hero come in to save her while she looked on admiringly at the end, was just a slap in the face. The title "Gladiatrix" speaks for itself. Did you ever see the young lab assistant ask to (man)made into a pointy breasted Madonna superhero? No. The choice about her own body was taken from her, pretty close to home for women. Why she would call herself Gladiatrix? My only guess was that she didn't name herself, just as she didn't make herself.
Overall, there was very little diversity throughout the collection, which is a shame, and not reflective of the very diverse fans of steampunk. And that Bushido entry was just crazy bad. It's like the author and artist had never actually seen a Japanese person, or watched any Samurai film or anything. The 'samurai' looked straight out of Brave Heart. I thought everyone knew how to commit seppuku, but not only was the depicted seppuku totally wrong, but physically impossible as well. It was laugh out loud ridiculous.
Adding to my qualms about the stories were the typos. Just unnecessary, something so basic and easy to fix shouldn't have made it to the print version.
I also was hounded throughout the collection by the fact that there were few women represented, and the few that were, weren't represented well. I took exception with the first comic especially. It featured what is beginning to be an archetypal role for women in steampunk literature. A girl posing as a boy. This was by far the weakest attempt I've ever seen. From her hairstyle to her accessorizing (yes, accessorizing) it wouldn't take Sherlock Holmes to uncover her 'secret.' There are many awesome examples (both fictional and factual) about women masquerading as men that the comic became a bit insulting, drawing the character as if she just pulled on her brother's old uniform (which fit despite the inherent differences in women and men's physical shapes?) and thought that'd do the trick and completely ignoring the real struggle and fear women donning men's clothing often face. And then having the dashing hero come in to save her while she looked on admiringly at the end, was just a slap in the face. The title "Gladiatrix" speaks for itself. Did you ever see the young lab assistant ask to (man)made into a pointy breasted Madonna superhero? No. The choice about her own body was taken from her, pretty close to home for women. Why she would call herself Gladiatrix? My only guess was that she didn't name herself, just as she didn't make herself.
Overall, there was very little diversity throughout the collection, which is a shame, and not reflective of the very diverse fans of steampunk. And that Bushido entry was just crazy bad. It's like the author and artist had never actually seen a Japanese person, or watched any Samurai film or anything. The 'samurai' looked straight out of Brave Heart. I thought everyone knew how to commit seppuku, but not only was the depicted seppuku totally wrong, but physically impossible as well. It was laugh out loud ridiculous.
Adding to my qualms about the stories were the typos. Just unnecessary, something so basic and easy to fix shouldn't have made it to the print version.
otterno11's review
1.0
I have to say, this was quite a mess. A handful of mildly interesting ideas marred by awkward conceptions and stereotypical depictions, Steampunk Originals leaves a lot to be desired, both in the first and second parts of the title. In spite of the intriguing descriptions, which posits a variety of alternate history tropes, hardly any of these ideas are used, and the features end up feeling both disconnected and repetitive. While the art here ranges from amateur to pretty good, the writing is generally trite and cliched, with chaotic panel layout, awful dialogue, and nonsensical world building that does little to explore just what “steampunk” is, aside from gears, goggles, and the Union Jack. It’s really anything but “punk”, and the “steam” aspect only exists because gears. While short comics often are great ways to explore a diverse setting, here the lack of space may be part of the problem. Most were too short to even begin to sketch out a story, and many are simply one page spreads relying on jokes that go nowhere and ridiculously wrong headed ideas of the nineteenth century. None are effective, either at exploring the themes of the immense steampunk genre or commenting upon them and are simply variations of the same pseudo-Victorians in old timey robot suits fighting monsters. Particularly egregious was the “End of Bushido,” a laughable depiction of the “last samurai” battling laser blasting robots with some of the worst depictions of samurai I have ever seen in a comic; they looked more like vikings than anything else and I had to wonder if the artist had ever even seen a picture of actual samurai armor? Those interested in steampunk can find better, more interesting, comic offerings.
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