Writers: mink and Paolo Parente
Artist: Paolo Parente
Publisher: Image
Paolo Parente’s Dust has been around for a few years. It started as a What If story that imagined what the world would have been like if the Nazis had found alien technology and prolonged World War II into the 50s. It has already been made into toys and has been around on the convention scene for some time. The creative team is a bizarre mix. Mink, or Christopher Wingfield, is a music video director and also currently working on directing the new Mortal Kombat movie. Parente used to work as an illustrator for Versace and has been doing various design work for the gaming industry. The plan for Dust seems to be to put out a number of mini series, as well as a boardgame from Fantasy Flight Games in October, and then try to get a monthly series out of it.
So onto the comic itself. What this seems to be is a longer comic cut in half and published as a two-parter rather than one-shot. Rather than give us an origin story Dust starts off with a précis of the concept, a cast list so you have a score card for later and then jumps into a Dirty Dozen style mission. Well that would appear to be the point of it, but instead this first issue is focused very much on Captain Koshika, a Soviet Armour fighter. That’s someone piloting a giant robot suit to the rest of us. We follow her as she’s parachuted in on a top secret mission to stop a Nazi rocket and some giant apes. Yes you read that correctly. The rest of the cast would seem to be on their way, but the opening list of characters seems to be a left over from when this was a one-shot.
The artwork is good, although I do sense some inexperience to the comic format. Adversaries appear out of nowhere and then disappear just as quickly. The writing is serviceable. It does rely on captions a little too much, as a form of shorthand I assume. You can tell the creators love the idea, but they want to show everything now rather than let the story progress to let it unfold. The comic looks great, in that it has concepts that are strong and visually exciting, but so far it needs a bit more clarity in terms of action and definite need for focus. I understand the idea behind dropping straight into the action, but mechs and giant monkeys all mixed in with World War II action just looks a bit odd. There needs to be a better explanation, or the elements need to be introduced slower. That said I’m definitely on board for the next few stories as the concept of the WW2 Mechs got me when I saw them as toys.
For me I would definitely recommend this to fans of Red Star (where else are you going to get a bit of Soviet action whilst you wait for a new issue) and even Hellboy. The mix of insane ideas would seem to suggest this isn’t a limited concept, but a little more clarity and I think this is a winner.
Mark Peyton – has a MA in History and Research from the University of Hull specialising in the Hundred Years War. In a complete departure from that he now runs communications and membership for a UK based Trade Union as well as being a part time writer/journalist.
He is a founding member of Millarworld acting as a moderator and as an editor for Fractal Matter.