Top Cow’s new Kickstarter-supported Cyber Force is a lot of fun. And even better, it’s free.
Series creator Marc Silvestri teams up Top Cow’s president Matt Hawkins to bring back the these characters in a new revamped format. I guess I’m lucky going into this not remembering too much of my Cyber Force history, as they took the concept and started it from scratch.
Our story is set in the generally boring city of Pittsburgh, which has been rebuilt by the evil conglomerate CDI. Now renaming the home of the Penguins Millennium City, the company looks to have some sort of diabolical plan in motion (I assume global domination; it’s a comic book after all). They accomplished this with a secret army of hybrid human/robots. The only person who is both aware of this and can stop it is a teenage girl codenamed Velocity, the cyber enhanced daughter of CDI’s president.
The only people she can turn to are a bunch of renegade/decommissioned former CDI hybrids. The most popular of the original Cyberforcers, Ripclaw, is the first to be recruited after the company murders his wife and daughter. By the end of the second issue, the two go off to find the original Cyber Force leader Stryker, who has been hiding out with the civilians (normal people) leading a quiet life as a toll collector. The question at the end is will he go out of hiding and resume his war against the evil CDI.
The story really picks up by the second issue. The best way I can explain it is that it’s a tale of a dystopian future, like Terminator 2: Judgement Day or the worlds George Orwell created, with an evil government/authority that has little regard for its subjects and there is a counter movement bent on stopping it. What it then adds is a touch of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns with Stryker happily living a life off the grid on his own, but now he’s being provoked into getting back into life as a commando.
The story is a lot of fun and you can’t beat reading it, as it’s a free monthly installment. So if you pick this up, thank the generous people who funded the project. Eventually it’s going to be released as a hardcover and I think it’ll be a great read in that format. On the art side, Khoi Pham does a great job conjuring up his inner Silvestri.
The new Cyber Force gets a thumbs up. It’s less of a super hero comic and definitely on the science fiction end of the theme spectrum. You can check these out for free over at Comixology.
Ridiculously Awesome 