Review: Cyborg Vol. 1- The Imitation Of Life

Quick Summary

Pros: The book’s main mystery is interesting. The artwork looks nice in a few places.

Cons: The book’s main narrative is distracted and fails to effectively highlight its biggest positives. The storytelling is far too obvious and leaves no room for nuance. The art style jumps around in a way that seriously disrupts the tone of the story.

Overall: The first volume in this new Cyborg series gets things off to a rocky start. The comic’s central narrative is not that compelling and only contains a few points of genuine interest. Plus, some of the writing is unappealing and the artwork is wildly inconsistent. A few moments in the volume may appeal to diehard fans of Cyborg but, as a whole, this might not be a great volume for most readers.

Story

Cyborg Vol. 1: The Imitation of Life, by John Semper Jr., is a pretty disappointing collection. At its core, the volume raises some interesting questions about Cyborg and introduces a neat mystery. However, this is overshadowed by a distracted narrative that prevents these positives from fully capturing one’s attention. This problem is further exacerbated by the obvious nature of the storytelling and dialogue. In the end, the book’s main plotline is just not that compelling and does not have enough to drive forward serious interest in this series. Hopefully, the next volume will place more focus on the comic’s positives and will be able to bring this series to the quality level it should have.

(spoilers start here)

The biggest problem in The Imitation of Life comes from its priorities. The volume immediately introduces several intriguing mysteries that could work as a solid centerpiece for this new series. However, it also throws a ton of subplots into the mix that constantly distract from this. It is hard to become invested in a story about a cyborg exploring his soul and fighting against a mysterious villain when there are breaks that jump into characters’ love lives, random bursts of almost pointless action, and a few everyday interactions.

Alongside this problem is the obvious nature of the writing. There is almost never a point where the reader is left to wonder about a character’s motives or actions. Almost every villain goes on a rant about what they are doing and why they are doing it while every hero inorganically explains their plan as well. When Cyborg meets a faceless character from his memory, the reader is never given the chance to wonder why this character is faceless or what this could mean; instead, the faceless character explains the metaphorical relevance of their appearance and, just a few pages later, the reader actually learns who this character is. There is no room for nuance in this book, which severely works against the book’s appeal.

Despite all of this, there are some positives burred in this book, most of which come from the questions asked over the course of the narrative. From an early point, The Imitation of Life ponders the nature of Cyborg’s existence and introduces a mysterious villain with equally mysterious motives. However, the book’s negatives prevent these few positives from living up to their full potential.

(spoilers end here)

Art

There are points in The Imitation of Life where the artwork looks great. Paul Pelletier and Will Conrad both provide realistic and well-laid out work. Their chapters bring a cinematic flair to the comic’s action that allows it to shine in a few places.

Unfortunately, the quality of the artwork seriously degrades as the volume progresses. The visuals go from highly realistic and cinematic to highly stylized and cartoonish with no warning whatsoever. These later chapters are not bad on their own but jumping from one art style to the other is unpleasant, especially when the art styles are as dramatically different as the ones seen here. It ends up severely disrupting the tone of the book’s second half and creates even more problems in an already problematic volume.

Continuity

Cyborg Vol. 1: The Imitation of Life is the first volume in the Rebirth Cyborg series. This new series is a successor to the Cyborg Vol. 1 series and continues some of its general themes. However, this new series mostly stands on its own and simply provides a general progression of Cyborg’s progress after the New 52 era (his progress in this era can be seen in the New 52 section of our “Cyborg Reading Order“).

The story here continues in Cyborg Vol. 2: Danger in Detroit (Review).

This volume also references other comic books, detailed below:

• Cyborg’s origin story and first battle with the Justice League (Reading Order) is mentioned a few times. This occurred across Justice League: Origin (Review).