Broken Frontier

The superhuman team called Cyberforce is back together, this time to take down familiar alien beings threatening to destroy Earth—their parents.

My exposure to Cyberforce dates back to the early days of Image Comics, when flashy art was pretty much all one needed to sell a comic book. Since that time, readership (or rather buyership) for all comics has diminished exponentially, forcing the industry to evolve more toward plot-driven stories. Art, while obviously still vital to a book’s survival, has become almost a secondary requirement. Top Cow has a reputation for bucking these trends by putting out books that contain colorful characters that live to fight, flex their oversized muscles and live for the next big explosion. With about the first two-thirds of Cyberforce #4 dedicated to an extended battle, it appears as though that reputation is well founded.

For those who don’t know, Cyberforce is currently made up of five cybernetically enhanced individuals with alien DNA spliced into their own. Ripclaw, Velocity, Ballistic, Heatwave and Cyblade were created to act as "muscle" for an evil corporation. They have since defected and jointly fight battles that others cannot. Needless to say, their creators are not happy campers.

Because of the long action sequence, Ron Marz relegates himself more to choreography and by-the-book barking of orders to team members than to anything really thought provoking or interesting beyond, perhaps, the action itself. While he does finally slow things down to make way for a scene that brings an old member back into the fold, there is nothing really remarkable about the plot progression this issue. I will, however, say that anyone holding affection for these characters may enjoy the final few pages as they set up what could be a promising final act.

Speaking of flashy art, I was pretty impressed with Pat Lee’s delivery here. There are a lot of hi-tech gadgets and robots and spaceships in these pages for him to show where his most noted artistic talents lie. And though he still has a little trouble with consistency regarding human anatomy and faces, those shortcomings were far less common here than I have witnessed from him before. Perhaps that is attributed to the many inkers assigned to the project, but I’d like to think that Lee is able to stand on his own.

This issue will most likely appeal to fans that appreciate bombastic art from the old school Image days. For those looking beyond a "kewl" character design for something a bit more intellectual, Cyberforce #4 is likely to leave one wondering how the book even got into his or her hands.