Tether #1 (Isle Squared Comics)
Story : Chuck Amadori
Art : Alex Reis (art) and Nimesh Morarji (colours)
At first glance, Tether appears to be nothing but another post-apocalyptic/alternate reality based comic – albiet with female gladiators in a quasi-Roman style dictatorship under an emperor named Trovar.
The story itself reads fairly unremarkably. At first I thought, “hey, I get to review two comics this week with kick-ass ladies leading the way”. But then was a little let down when it turned into nothing but a comic that felt like nothing new. We get hot-bodied ladies fighting in a gladiatorial arena, we get your requisite mad-scientist type(s), the evil dictator with hidden agenda’s, of course there’s an over-arching mystery which we will likely not hear any details of until much further down – which is of course related to one of our scantily clad heroines.
What was well rendered but paricularly creepy was the mad scientist getting his rocks off while fondling a strapped up patient. I get the purpose and it was good for the character but man did it feel creepy! I suppose that was one of the sequences where the artists actually did a good job of depicting emotion and intent visually. They came close to being gross (without nudity) but just barely stayed on the not-too-creepy side. Overall Reis has a decent handle on anatomy and his figures are consistent and well rendered, but I was none to crazy about his faces and layouts which were not quite as consistent. The colours by Morarji however, those were really quite pleasing and I hope to see him do more comics down the line because he’s got some skills.
The comic read like any other of its ilk, but then the reveal at the end of the issue took me totally by surprise and FINALLY revealed the reason behind the title and (SPOILER!) that image of mirror worlds one upside down over the other with one gigantic building being a glowing tether between them was a really fantastic one on which the art team did a bang-up job! After having elected to drop the series, that page made me at least curious to see what the point of it was so chances are I’ll try out another issue or two for now.
SCORE : 5.8 / 10
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