Jason & the Argobots has been a whole lot of fun, reading a lot like J. Torres and Mike Norton writing a love-letter to giant robots and monster movies from Voltron to Ultraman. However, while it's been fun, the plot has been a little on the light side, and it was only in this fourth issue that some of the twists and turns of the robots origins are revealed and plenty of other questions are raised. I enjoyed this issue, but I also was struck by a feeling that just when the book was getting really interesting, that's when it ended.
By far the most fun aspect of Jason for me has been not the giant robots and super-heroes, as you might expect, but the interaction between Jason, Juni and their grandfather. Juni is quite possibly my favorite character in the book, the quintessential little girl who lives to bug her brother, and Torres's choice to use her as the narrator of the "Previously On..." segments was one of the best choices he made for the series. While Jason has a determined heroism about him, and their grandfather has an intelligence that he mostly keeps hidden, Juni's characterization and sense of humor are out there on display all the time.
This doesn't mean the giant robot and super-hero stuff isn't fun, however. Mike Norton does a great job on Chiron's battle against the giant rock creature at the end and the surprise appearance of... well, that would be telling... let's just say he gets plenty of mileage out of the surprise in a big two-page splash. In addition, I thought the way Torres handled the military's hunt for Chiron, giving them a reason to stop overtly tracking him down, was a great way to set up the status quo.
My complaint is mostly that the status quo took four issues to set up, and that I wanted to see a whole lot more of the book after it was finished than I did when I was reading the first three issues. While the brother-sister bickering, the super-hero/robot fights and that sort of thing were fun, they sort of felt like padding when we started to learn a little more about the kids' parents and the origins of the robots. There's plenty of rich story material in there, and I can't help but think that one of those stories might have made for a stronger first story, rather than a fairly extended origin sequence with a couple of (honestly) inconsequential fight scenes.
On the upside, though, that does mean there's a lot to explore in the future of Jason & the Argobots, and it's my hope that we will see another series. Torres clearly kept his best cards close to the vest until late in the story, and while that left me a little disappointed with the story he did show us by comparison, it means that I have a great interest in seeing another tale of these characters with a bit more meat to the plot.
