REVIEW: ‘Empress #1′ is an exciting space adventure with a royal flavor!
Raves
Rants
With a creative team like Mark Millar and Stuart Immonen you can expect Empress #1 to be a quality debut. It’s impressive how Millar can just jump from one genre to another with ease. And it shows in this fast-paced first issue. Up front, Empress may look like a science fiction story but as you […]
With a creative team like Mark Millar and Stuart Immonen you can expect Empress #1 to be a quality debut. It’s impressive how Millar can just jump from one genre to another with ease. And it shows in this fast-paced first issue.
Up front, Empress may look like a science fiction story but as you go on it reads more like a space fantasy. Millar dives right in with a fully realized world complete with a kingdom, spaceships and dinosaurs.
The story opens with the tyrannical King Morax looking over a gladiator match reminiscent of the ancient Roman Empire (even though the premise is set 65 million years before man set foot on Earth). From there, we get introduced to Emporia, King Morax’s wife, who secretly hates her husband and desperately wants to escape. And that’s where the story starts. Millar effortlessly takes only a couple of pages to set up the main premise before moving on with the rest of story.
The next scenes are pretty much just action sequences, and because of that the issue can be a quick read. Although a fast read can be considered a negative trait for some, Millar incorporates some backstory in between and through dialogue. And thanks to Stuart Immonen and Wade von Grawbadger‘s beautiful art every page is a treat to the eyes. It also helps that the art flows smoothly from panel to panel, which does not make each shot feel lost to the reader.
While the character designs look like something we have seen a lot before, it’s still amazing to see the creativity and imagination that Millar and Immonen put into this book. The setting and characters feel regal, and the background desings are magnificent. And finally the faces are very expressive, something that Immonen excels at.
Overall Empress #1 is an exciting space adventure with a royal flavor to it. The plot appears to be very simplistic at this point, but the way it is executed just catches the reader in a way that could very well be one of Mark Millar’s best work ever.
Drew Bagay
