Marc Silvestri’s creation of the Cyber Force team has come a long way since 1992 in the Top Cow Productions days. Writer Ron Marz and Image Comics bring to you Velocity TP, published on April 27th, 2016.
Velocity TP is a quick book to read through. Although the series focuses on one of the main characters of the acclaimed series, Cyberforce, Velocity (real name, Carin Taylor), it’s a story consistently written to progress the story forward from the present moment.
Velocity is a young girl with a love for classic films, from romantic comedies to dark horrors, such as German Expressionistic film Das Cabinet des Doktor Caligari (1920), alluding to wonderful foreshadowing at the end of the story. She’s one of the main characters of Cyberforce – a special task team that was experimented on and given superhuman abilities through cybernetic implants. “In this paranoid era of technological leaps and global connectivity, their formerly cutting-edge cybernetic implants have become obsolete compared to their enemies’ universal surveillance” (via TopCow.com).
There are two aspects of this book that has it going for Velocity TP: the story content and the artwork. Image Comics for the most part produces comics with beautiful artwork and color saturation and Velocity TP does not fall short.
However, in terms of character dialogue – I felt like Mandy Moore was in my head the entire time giving me the impression that Velocity is not a womyn superhero, but a girl superhero. With her exaggerated comebacks, her thought process, and persona, this is a better read for someone under the age of twenty. Even though I can relate to her with the love of classic films, it was a cheeky portion of the story where she states,
The romantic comedies were actually romantic then. And funny. And didn’t all star Jennifer Aniston.
It probably doesn’t help either that this was written from an all-male crew, with one womyn in charge of layout.
She reminds me of a young, female version of Ziggy Stardust with the green lightning-bolt over her right eye and tight jumpsuit and a “good-girl” version of Poison Ivy, minus the plants. And her shoes are just plain awesome and sort of reminded me of Aquaman.
In conclusion, if you had a younger sibling who would like to start reading comics this would be a good start for them. The drawings and colors would be enough to catch their attention and to notice all the small details the artists poured into the four-issued trade (plus one, Pilot Season: Velocity #1). I recommend this to readers who want to look at amazing artwork and a quick story, rather than anything with real depth.
