After waiting what seemed a long time after issue zero, Aspen's latest series created by Joe Benitez kicks off with Lady Mechanika issue one. The mysteries and questions continue to rise as Lady Mechanika is still trying to figure out her past.
The story starts by revealing another mechanical woman, and she is being hunted down by a group of mercenaries. She is found at the city of Mechanika, the same city where Lady Mechanika is seeking refuge. She hopes to seek more answers about the deceased woman’s mysterious creation. From the already strong preview of the series with issue zero, issue one of Lady Mechanika is a great follow-up. Everything is improved on with the art and the storytelling, although it does still have room for improvement for this to be an outstanding series.
Joe Benitez still seems to slightly struggle with his pacing in this issue. Like with issue zero, everything felt compressed while trying to jam pack as much content needed for an issue. Although this is a weakness for the comic, it has strengths. Even though the reader may have a feeling of bewilderment with how much is happening, it is clear that Benitez has a lot to tell in the future and knows where he would like to take his latest creation. There is still too little of this series to be able to compare it to his previous works.
Benitez's drawing in this comic is excellent. It is not made to look overly realistic, but more a “cartoon-ised” version. He is great with detail. Benitez makes the women look strong and dominant. His work on the characters clothes and other costumes is also worthy of note, he makes an improvement on his background artwork from the previous issue as well.
Peter Steigerwald does the colouring for this issue. As with the previous, he again uses bright and vibrant colours that really bring the world of Lady Mechanika to life. Even the dark colours have a sense of boldness to them, much like his colouring for Fathom.
As with the zero issue having several cover variants so does issue one. With three done by Joe Benitez and Peter Steigerwald (one being limited to 750 copies available from Universal Outpost) and two by J. Scott Campbell. Maybe these guys like their variants and just want to let their artistic flairs be unleashed to the audience, but I personally believe it is not needed though they all do look nice.
So wrapping up, although this has not been the best beginnings for a series it surely promises to become an exciting new series for people to collect and I look forward to issue two.
Pencil – 7.0
Colours – 7.5
Story – 6.0
Overall – 6.8
