Tech Jacket

January 14, 2008 | Trades

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Tech Jacket
Robert Kirkman, E.J. Su
Image Comics
$14.99 US (Paperback)
*** (out of five)

Once upon a time in the backwoods of Kentucky, there was a young comic book writer who released three new series.
Two of them would go on to become critically acclaimed and commercially successful and lead the writer from obscurity to fame (such as it is in the comic book world), while the third would be euthanized after just six issues.
The writer in question is Robert Kirkman, the successful titles are The Walking Dead and Invincible and the now-deceased series is Tech Jacket.
When the three series are put side by side, it’s easy to say that this series is the one that deserved the axe. It’s not that this Iron-Man-meets-The-Last-Starfighter premise of a boy who becomes bonded with a suit of armour and is blasted into space to aid an alien race isn’t good, but it just doesn’t grab you the way Kirkman’s two surviving series do.
It’s neither as gripping as The Walking Dead or as witty as Invincible.
All that being said, the writer states in both his intro and in the included sketchbook that he’d like to return to this character one day and it would certainly be interesting to see what a more mature and self-assured Kirkman could do with this premise now.
Only time will tell.

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