I have zero nostalgic attachment to the Micronauts, as I've never read any of the comics and I have only vague recollections of the toys. However, the preview book from Image seemed to promise less trading on nostalgia and more of a general science-fiction adventure comic, and I'm always down with those. Unless they're a little slow-paced and yet confusing, and not terribly effective in conveying the characters, as this first issue of the Micronauts is. The basic snatch and grab that opens the story is just fine, but once our lead is inside the rift, we're introduced to a variety of poorly defined characters with uncertain loyalties. If the goal of the book was to make us feel like Ryan Archer, confused about this new world, it has succeeded. If the goal was to hook me and make me want to come back for the second issue, well, on that score it failed.
When I read this book, what I see mostly is lost potential. I'm fascinated by the development of the rift and the building of a device to explore all that, but that segment of the story is over, told only in flashback to get the basic backstory of Ryan Archer out of the way. Certainly that's a reasonable choice, and I even found the attack on the facility to be pretty solid, brutal and not completely comprehensible to those under attack. It's clear to the outside reader that Ryan was grabbed for a purpose, but for Ryan his suddenly normal existence has been completely uprooted for no clear reasons. I liked that, and found it to be an interesting hook.
Unfortunately, Wherle goes too far in that direction, because even when he shows us things going on inside the rift, we're still sort of seeing it from Ryan's point of view. The book spends a few pages on a slave exchange that I didn't quite grasp, and if Baron Karza was looking for Archer and General Ki had him, I'm not clear on why he didn't bring him to Karza immediately, or why it took General Nova so long to report his arrival. From a storytelling perspective, I understand that Ryan had to be thrown in a cell with Acroyear so that he could relate his flashback, but from a logical perspective, it doesn't make much sense, and it resulted in my confusion as to who was allied with whom.
The upside to the book is the artwork by Eric Wolfe Hanson, who impressed me with his fill-in on G.I. Joe and who does an admirable job here. I might wish for a little more detail in the technology, as the vista of Mechopolis as well as the armor of Acroyear and the Harrowers is a little too simple and dull to really make an impression, but I found Hanson's storytelling techniques to be strong and his designs for the faces of the human characters makes them each distinctive. I also thought Hi-Fi Color did a terrific job on the Micronaut probe sequence, using blue to give the sense of a pervading glow rather than simply drenching the artwork, which could easily have looked clumsy.
Unlike Transformers and G.I. Joe, this is the first of the nostalgia books that I really have no attachment to, so it's possible that I'm just not the target audience. However, from what I've heard from friends who are fans, this book is largely a new spin with only a couple familiar characters, and I'm not sure that it's going to go over any better for those who remember the Marvel Micronauts than it did with me.
