Romulus #1

by Ian B on October 05, 2016

Written by: Bryan Hill

Art by: Nelson Blake II

Lettered by: Troy Peteri

 

 

Romulus follows Ashlar, a member of the Ancient Order of Romulus, who works as one of their Wolves, highly trained women who are used as tools of the Order to carry out assassinations since ancient times. This first issue mainly sets up her back story, her training with her mother, her being sent on missions, the Order moving away from Wolves and towards men who who are highly medicated to be strong and feel no pain, also forcing them to follow orders, and eventually to her and her mother turning against the Order for killing all the Wolves, her mother dying in the process. We then cut forward to the present, where one of the Order's medicated goons are harassing a brilliant scientist, forcing him to come work for the Order. Ashlar bursts in, and after a fight scene in which she kills the man, tells the scientist to come with her and she will explain. The overall story is interesting, and the focus on back story is a nice change of pace with these new series that always seem to want to start at 11 and never explain their concept or characters to the readers. My one gripe with the book is the sudden change in Ashlar's character between the back story and the present day. She goes from respectful assassin who turns against her masters, to swearing bad ass girl almost on a dime, and it's just a character archetype I've seen done to death, especially in these smaller independent comics.

 

 

The artwork is simple, mostly relying on flat colours and minimal shading, which works fairly well for the book. Some of the backgrounds are a little sparse, and there is a frankly ridiculous panel of Ashlar's mother sticking a flaming sword through a man's head while firing an assault rifle into the air with the other, but for the most part the art is fairly solid, using a lot of wolf imagery for the female assassins and bull imagery for the male soldiers.

 

 

Ultimately, while this series doesn't seem like it would be for me, it's clear that the quality is there for it to be for someone else. Most of my issues with the book were minor concerns that can easily be fixed with a little better fleshing out of characters in future issues and a little more concern for making scenes look cool without making them look absurd. If you're in the mood for something new, and are a fan of martial arts style action with a hint at some greater conspiracy looming in the background, go ahead and try it, it's easily something that I could see a lot of people enjoying.

Our Score:

8/10

A Look Inside