The Good
It's been a while since anyone has seen Magnus: Robot Fighter, and one concern that a few people may have had is that will this be new reader friendly? While it may seem like the obvious choice to keep it open to everyone, many new series, featuring old characters fail to do this; however, MAGNUS: ROBOT FIGHTER does a great job at reintroducing this character to a brand new audience.
Writer Fred Van Lente not only keeps this extremely new reader friendly, but the set up for this first issue is extremely solid. Van Lente really crafts the world around Magnus and lets the reader know everything about his past. It's paced out so well, and gives the reader a huge scope into where Magnus came from.
Cory Smith does some stellar art throughout the issue and visual tells a compelling and pretty emotional story. There's a few things here Smith does extremely well, such as page layouts and drawing a character getting hit by rain. Small things like this really come together for a great looking comic.
Now the question remains, does Magnus fight robots in this issue? Yes, and it's awesome. Van Lente and Smith put together some great looking action sequences here featuring some great decapitating karate chops.
The Bad
The color choices made sense, but they were also pretty weird. Most of the issue has a sepia toned look to it, which makes the reader think that everything happened in the past. However, more than half of the book is like this, so the reader starts to become desensitized to it, and then BAM, full color in the present day.
The second half of the issue rushes the world Magnus is in quite a bit, while the opening does an amazing job at setting up the past, it feels like the latter part gives the reader too much too fast.
The Verdict
MAGNUS: ROBOT FIGHTER #1 is a great start to a new series that is a ton of fun to read. Van Lente does a phenomenal job at setting this book up and readers will really love how this issue, as a whole, plays out. Obviously, Magnus is fighting some robots here, which many people will be looking out for, but what's most important is that this is a great start to a brand new series. Overall, I highly recommend this issue.
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