STEAM

A young boy is flung into a steam-powered world as he searches for a way to save his lost father and an entire planet in Ford, Leslie, and de la Cruz’s debut collaboration.

Neglected and abused since his father Henry’s disappearance, young Arlo finds a strange machine and is thrown into an alternate world called Pother. New friends explain that Henry has been kidnapped and Arlo is also in serious danger. Two feuding factions—one worships a machine, the other an unseen deity—and spectral planet natives that inhabit the dead would be enough, but there’s also the malevolent corporate force from Earth called the Prerogative that is draining Pother’s natural resources and killing the planet. Worst of all? Arlo’s father is responsible for bringing it to Pother in the first place. Now Arlo must seek out the planet’s natives to save both his father and Pother. Despite lively art and a decent stab at steampunk worldbuilding, this graphic novel falls short thanks to an already overdone premise. Plot serves action rather than vice versa and sprints toward a sequel-desperate conclusion, leaving readers with underdeveloped characterization and a confused tangle of plot detail fragments. And even with the benefit of two planets to populate, the novel features a single, extremely peripheral, character of color.

Action-packed but fecklessly flat.