Turning Tiger
Richmond Clements and Alex Moore
Renegade Arts Entertainment
This is a superb comic, a really nice well told story of a young girl, Sarah who is intrinsically connected to a military robot fighting machine, although she is unaware of this when we start our story in a fairly normal yet not clichéd suburban setting that is Ewanstown.
The setting feels right, rather than forced, and Richmond Clements (co-founder of the Hi-Ex comic con in Inverness) shows his strength in creating characters that, although fictitious, have the ability to engender a connection to the reader.
Three large military robots are being put through their paces by General Lou Betram and Professor Rosie Crowe (who have an interesting dynamic between them) when it seems to go wrong, as one Robot, Number One, flies away following a malfunction around the same time that Sarah and her mother are in a road traffic accident.
And so the story really starts to show its merit, as Robot One kidnaps Sarah, and girl and robot come together, with their special bond comes at the fore, which has a rather grittier back story element than I had expected.
Alex Moore’s artwork is clean; there is a hint of a cartoon and manga influence to her style, but it is in itself distinctively individual. The action scenes are caught really well, while her slightly exaggerated human facials contain detail and humour.
The perspectives are more demanding given the scales required between a robot that can pick up an armoured personal carrier and a young girl, and no matter what size Sarah is, her movement, actions and, importantly, story proceed with alacrity and clarity, while the robots seem proportional and correct, even in battle.
This is Moore’s first foray into comics and it’s really quite impressive and the layouts, backgrounds and sequential style is good story telling.
I was pleased with the way in which Clements explores a human disconnection matched by the visual depiction of the family unit that is placed under incredibly unusual and traumatic pressures; even though it is fast-paced, there is sufficient depth here to satisfy the mature reader who is looking for more than just big robots fighting (not that we object to big robots fighting! – Joe). It’s not dissimilar to the types of questions posed by Phillip K. Dick, possibly the finest architect of modern science fictional prose, who wondered what it is to be human. He was born a twin, yet his sister Jane Charlotte, passed away only six weeks after they were born, leaving Dick with the rest of his life to ponder the great what- if, the loss, the chance and of course the phantom twin, which manifested in some of his works.
I was rather surprised that I enjoyed this story quite so much. I was impressed with the overall package, a square bound edition collecting two comics that were online, a forty-four page story in total, with a selection of sketches, and a gallery. I must comment on Chie Kutsuwada‘s gallery contribution here, as although I was unsure of her portrayal of Sarah, the overall delightful depiction captured everything about this story in one page.
The only issue is what’s the next issue; the story seems to have a number of viable further avenues for story continuation, but it is also complete as it is, and yet for me, I immediately wanted to know what was coming forth from this pair.
James has recently penned a splendid review of comics from Irish creators in 2011, including Turning Tiger, which you can read over on ComicBuzz.
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