Something different will always grab my eye, and Second Stage Turbine Blade is definitely something different. It's a fantasy/science-fiction story based on elements derived from the band (and publisher) Coheed and Cambria. The blend of music and comics is not unheard of, as Tim Truman illustrated a Grateful Dead book, Neil Gaiman wrote an Alice Cooper book and just recently, Jim Mahfood did a comic based on the hip-hop group Felt, but it's still unusual. That's not all that makes Second Stage Turbine Blade unusual, as it features pretty lofty high concepts surrounding God, three different races and a cosmic setting and plot worthy of imagination pioneers like Moebius and Jack Kirby. Unfortunately, the high concepts are often a little too high, and there are full chunks of this book that make absolutely no sense, as well as a guarded, enigmatic approach that sometimes leads the reader to want to know more but more often lead this reader to frustration with the tiny morsels of info. This is an intriguing comic in many ways, but it's a frustrating comic in many others.
Second Stage Turbine Blade opens with a mysterious couple of pages that immediately drew me in. A little boy and his sister are given dire pronouncements by an authority figure, who makes veiled comments about killing someone and important work to be done. It was moody, the art was very nice, and I was definitely ready to know more... and then Sanchez puts up a wall of expository text. In fairness, the complex world of Second Stage Turbine Blade requires a lot of explanation, but the immense info-dump about three races and the worlds they live in and the structure of their society is enough to make the eyes glaze over, and I can't help but think that it could have been parcelled out a little more judiciously, in more of a sequential art format, rather than just dumped on the reader.
Oddly enough, the rest of Second Stage Turbine Blade has the opposite problem, which is that it's really chincy with the information. It's clear that we're at the start of some sort of world-shaking plot involving manipulation of various parties, but only the very roughest shape of what's going to happen is evident, and there's not enough to really judge the characters on based on what little context we're given. Coheed Killgannon, the man who seems likely to serve as our protagonist, is making horrific choices based on the word of someone he barely knows and a sense of destiny that he might feel but the reader doesn't, and it's kind of hard to get inside his head and empathize with him, which makes Second Stage Turbine Blade kind of lacking in terms of a point-of-view character.
The artwork by Wes Abbott (I've no idea if it's the same Wes Abbott who letters for Comicraft) is pretty solid stuff, a blocky style that, combined with the bright colors, reminds me of simplified animation storyboards. Abbott is at his best with the moody, darker stuff like the opening pages or the silhouetted glimpses of the Knowledge, the Beast and the Inferno, but all of the art conveys the story effectively and is pleasing to the eye.
When it comes to mood and big ideas, Second Stage Turbine Blade definitely delivers. The trinity of races and their involvement in a planetary arrangement that is self-powering are grand science-fiction notions, and the notion of a struggle between two self-appointed holy rulers equally big and cosmic. Fans of Jim Starlin's comic work in particular will probably dig the larger-than-life cosmic vibe of Second Stage Turbine Blade, which blends traditional fantasy elements like angelic-looking beings, religion and destiny with science-fiction concepts like genetic engineering and plots that can destroy planets and galaxies. Sanchez and Abbott have the right scope, but what they're lacking is a tight focus that gives the readers a clearer window into this world. 6/10
