Comic Book Review: United Free Worlds #1-3

United Free Worlds #1-3

Creative Team -

Story by Blake Leibel
Pencils & Inks by Jason Raines (#1); Patrick Blaine (#2-#3)
Colors by Jesse Aronson, Michael Montaine, Moose Baumann
Covers by Steve Skroce
Published by Fantasy Prone and Devil's Due Publishing

A strange world appears precariously close to the Earth leading to a united planet Earth. After colonization begins, the humans on the strange, barren planet are slaughtered by a barbaric alien civilization living under the new planet's surface. In response, Earth creates a crack team to lead forces against the alien, dinosaur riding savages. Has Earth united it time to be wiped out?

Characters

Humans
Cretorians
Cynotaur

Actually, United Free Worlds has many, many characters as each member of the human task force are introduced and the Cretorians have several key members of their tribes named and introduced, but through issues #2 and #3, Cynotaur takes center point.

Cynotaur is the leader of the Cretorians, a society formerly tribal based who warred with each other constantly riding dinosaurs into battle. However, when Cretor gets sucked into a wormhole, it finds itself deposited near worlds where the inhabitants go to war with the Cretorians. To survive, the tribes unite under the brutal Cynotaur. He's kind of your typical barbarian ruler with a violent life forming him into a near perfect warrior. Even though conceptually Cynotaur isn't special, his visual presence, brought to us by Jason Raines, is impressive. Battle scenes with him in his skull helmet help make Cynotaur a cool lead character.

The humans' task force is lead by Barley Douglas, whose militaristic lifestyle extends into his child raising practices. He looks to be an interesting character, but we don't see him after issue #1, and the other members of the lead team don't get much exposure.

We need more exposure to characters other than Cynotaur before we can determine if the characters are interesting, but the potential is there.

Character Rating: 1/2 Worm...Loss of 1/2 worm for low exposure of other characters.

Plot

Issue #1 introduces us to the major plot. War between Earth and Cretor, newly neighboring planets with united populations against their new enemies. Issue #2 tells us the history of Cretorian leader Cynotaur: raised by his gentle mother until the age of their separation when his disgraces his father with his emotional outburst at his separation from her prompts his father to toss him in a pit with "vile creatures". Cynotaur does not die, however, and is the only creature to leave the pit alive. He grew to be a fierce warrior and created the wormhole that carried the planet to new galaxies ripe with invading beings leading to the unification of the tribes under Cynotaur's rule. Issue #3 continues the stories of key wars with strange, alien races as Cynotaur begins scavenging tools and weapons of war from defeated worlds and lead the Cretorian tribes to life under the surface fearing the prophecy of one enemy creature that there lies in wait for it "needs your planet's precious resources the processed corpses of you animal creatures to survive."

The concept is interesting and it honestly seems like the Cretorians are the heroes, not the humans, which is an intriguing focus. We haven't hardly seen any of Cretor's war with Earth as of yet, so that will be fascinating to see how writer Leibel handles things with the sympathy he's created for the Cretorians.

But if you have problems with suspending your disbelief, I warn you you will be tested here. But if you don't dwell on moving planets and worlds being so close but not destroying each other and dinosaurs on alien lands and so on, you'll find yourself caught up in the tale of a world caught forever in war. It'll be worth it.

Plot Rating: 2 Worms. Cool idea.

Art

I was concerned, at first, about the art. Issue #1 was predominantly many very small panels on each page. It helped cover a lot of story, but visually wasn't very interesting. Some of it was still very pretty, but some scenes which would have been impressive larger were crunched into small, forgettable panels. The final pages of the story were fabulous splash pages, however.

With #2 and the art being taken over by Blaine, the book becomes beautiful and violent. Whether it's Blaine's penchant for magnificent splash pages, or Leibel realized how good the book would look with more of them, or even just that after the first issue he didn't feel so much story needed to be within the pages, whatever the case, with issue #2 we beging getting regular beautiful splash pages of space scenes, and violent, bloody battles. The large, detailed panels of gore really creating a thrilling tale.

Art Rating: Art Rating: 1 1/2 Worms. Loss of 1/2 worm because some of the dinosaur shots are dispropotioned. I don't know if it's done for effect or it's just Blaine's style.

Overall Rating: 4 Worms. Strongly Recommended for fans of sci-fi, dinosaurs, and barbarian tales with a healthy ability for suspencion of disbelief.





United Free Worlds available at Amazon.com

United Free Worlds #1

United Free Worlds #2

United Free Worlds #3