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Friday, April 19, 2013

Comic Review: Five Weapons #1 by Jimmie Robinson


Five Weapons #1 (of 5) by Jimmie Robinson 
Price: $3.50
Diamond ID: DEC120508
On Sale: February 27, 2013
Series: Five Weapons
13-year-old Tyler finds himself in a specialized school where assassins send their kids for education and training in one of the five deadly weapons. Tyler doesn't have a weapon or any fighting skills, but he still plans to graduate by beating every weapon master in the school because he has a powerful ability that nobody can match: his razor-sharp mind! JIMMIE ROBINSON twists the insanity of BOMB QUEEN in a fun new series that will keep you guessing to the end. This series is rated T for Teen!

School would be scary enough with just one kid walking around wielding a weapon, but in Jimmie Robinson's Five Weapons, the only kid not walking around with a weapon is his protagonist.

Introduced as the son of a notorious assassin, Tyler Shainline, arrives on the campus of the School of Five Weapons to follow in the family tradition of ... well ... assassinating fools. After being welcomed by the prim and perplexing Principal O, Tyler is told he has until the end of the day to choose which of the five weapons he will choose as his specialty. But Tyler, for whatever reason, seems reluctant to choose any weapon at all.

The five kinds of weapons are knives, archery, staves, exotic weapons (which is still a bit murky by way of specifics), and even guns--now there's a hot button issue if ever there was one. Students are grouped together like a well-armed version of Hogwarts, replete with school uniforms that include bulls-eyes on their chests. Lovely.

At first glance, this whole setup might seem like a complete exploitative approach to kids and violence, but the story is far more clever than that, especially in Tyler's backstory and motivations. While the reasons why he's averse to weapons isn't explicitly stated, there are clues, and his methods of maintaining his unarmed status is quite charming. Throw in the pseudo-manga artwork, snappy dialogue, and bizarre supporting cast, and this series has a heckuva lot of potential.

4 Sheep




Guest Reviewer: Gef Fox
Wag The Fox: a den for dark fiction

2 comments:

  1. This looks like it might be fun. Thank you for sharing with us.

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  2. What I like is how Gef descried that while it may be kids with killer weapons, the story is more complex then that. This comic seems refreshing and out of the box, I'm looking forward to reading reviews on all the rest!

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