Daily Comic Book Mission #009: Void Rivals #1

Raise your hand if you like your daily comic book mission. I can see all those hands in the air. I'm telepathic. Good job. Welcome back to ComicBook.Beer, where today's assignment is a fun one. They're all fun. I don't recommend crappy comic books. Well, that's not entirely true. I'm sure I can find some, but this is a good comic book and the beginning of a series.

The beginning of an entire comic book universe. And I'm talking about Void Rivals issue number one, which is the beginning of the Energon universe from Image and Skybound, written by Robert Kirkman, illustrated by Lorenzo de Felici. De Felici, that's a fun name to say. I like that name. And I like the art too. It's very nice. I like the paper quality in this book.

Colors really pop, it's fun. Anyway, what's up with Void Rivals? It's like a mashup of all the Hasbro franchises and these original characters. And it starts here with the two main characters in the series. One's a Zerotonian and the other's an Agoran. Is it Agoran or Agorian? It's like Gamoran or Gamorian. I can never remember which one it is. It's Agorrian, I just checked.

The Agorrian is named Darak and the Zerotonian is Solaila and they're both wearing helmets so they can't see each other but they hate each other because they've been told to hate each other, and that's where the story starts because they have to work together to get off this planet. Both of their ships are destroyed so they have to bridge this hatred, and before they do that, they discover a Transformer crashed on the planet. now what's funny is that Void Rivals hints that the Transformers are going to be a bigger part of this story, even though the focus is on these two new characters. So the Transformer is just like, hey, like flies away and leaves them stranded there. It's like the whole issue.

It's a pretty quick read, but the artwork's very nice. I suspect this was challenging trying to launch this entire new universe where you've got these really cool things like Transformers and G.I. and they're like, but here's these new characters that you need to actually care about. And by the end of the first issue, you really don't, but if you keep reading Void Rivals, it's pretty cool series. Personally, I like their Transformers series better, but Void Rivals is a good read if you're looking for something a little different, but that has some familiar elements. And I like the way that they treat all the uh Transformers stuff in particular as the series gets going.

That made sense in this episode, unlike the last one. Well, you know, that's what happens when you combine beer and Batman. Everything gets all silly. So take it way back to 2023, which just sounds like a utopian paradise compared to today. You know the future's screwed up when Soylent Green starts to look awesome as like a reality. Like something to look forward to. Hey, it's Soylent Green Day. I mean, I'm eating my neighbors and friends, but you know. It's still better than 2026 in real life. I mean, just look at what comfort you get to go and die in. You get to look at flowers and stock footage of deer, and then they liquefy you, and then Charlton Heston starts screaming about things. That's such a great movie. I love the people mover things, like the ditch diggers that just push the people. I mean, they would totally do that today. I don't think there's a Soylent Green comic book. Maybe that's one that we'll have to work on one of these days.

There is a Logan's Run comic book, but Logan's Run looks like a utopian paradise by anybody's standards. So you gotta die at 30, that gives you a reason to escape, which is what they did. you know. There we go. Look at that, half the reviews, me talking about old movies again. Now it's not really a review, remember, this is a recommendation. I mean, I do like this issue. I like the series, it's not my favorite of the new series out there. I think at one point, like maybe 20 issues in, they're starting to like complicate things a little too much.

I'm actually about five issues behind right now but the first issue is a good-looking book and you can find this in a trade paper back so it's probably in the library or pick up a second printing or whatever. Check it out! Void Rivals! Issue number one is your Daily Comic Book Mission. Thank you for listening.