Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Alexa Lo, darkness, hermes press, Izik Bell, metalshade, top cow, witchblade

Izik Bell and Alexa Lo Channel Nineties Top Cow With Metalshade

Published Tue, 05 May 2020 13:45:24 -0500

Hermes Press has picked up a successfully Kickstartered comic book written and pencilled by Izik Bell and painted and edited by Alexa Lo looks to recreate the nineties/noughties style of comic familiar to readers of Witchblade and The Darkness, with a new superfiction title called Metalshade. Which for all intents and purposes looks like the kind of comic book that Top Cow just isn't publishing anymore.

The series is as "an original series set in a dystopian world where special abilities run wild. Metalshade is a lethal strike team of exotic, weirdly-powered antiheroes. Their reckless, anarchistic nature is balanced only by the flawless, surgical precision of their enigmatic leader Director Aeryn Thorn. At the heart of all this, lies the story of a young hacker named Terra Vexx – aka Vexxa – who uses her immense archipathic powers (the ability to create an endless variety of things with her quite brilliant mind, i.e. technology, weapons, even demonic little side kicks) exclusively for her own amusement, as well as the avoidance of all manner of personal responsibility. This all changes one glitch-filled night when Vexxa finds herself casually hacking government databases, perusing juicy state secrets (again, for her own amusement) and stumbles upon a series of "prophecy equations" predicting the imminent destruction of her ill-fated reality. The math is flawless. The predictions are real; the end is coming. The end of everything, including Vexxa's own life of merriment and leisure. For the first time ever, her hand is forced. She must take action, if only to preserve her own hedonistic lifestyle It's this chain of events that leads Vexxa headfirst into the twisted web of Aeryn Thorn and MetalShade

Hermes states "while their methods are ruthless, their actions consistently destabilize the tyrannical elements of their world" as well as ascribing the quote "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men [and women] stand ready to do violence on their behalf" to George Orwell who never said it. Rather he wrote of Rudyard Kipling, "he sees clearly that men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them" and of pacifism, saying "those who "abjure" violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf."

Anyway, here's a look at MetalShade. Do you see what I mean about Witchblade, The Darkness and the rest? Look for these creators to be the recipient of some interesting offers from comic book publishers looking to revive just this kind of feel, that they once got from Joe Madueria, Stephen Platt, John Cassaday and the like.