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Steam Punk
Steam Punk, Volume 2: Drama Obscura
With a mechanical arm, a furnace for a heart, and a hundred years of sleep behind him, Cole Blaquesmith is no ordinary man, and his quest is no ordinary adventure.
Having traded his humanity to the treacherous Absinthe in exchange for a 'cure' for his lady love, Cole finds himself on the front lines of a revolution, trying to take down the man who used him, killed his beloved, and took over half the known world. With a ragtag band of stalwarts, Cole Blaquesmith takes the fight to Lord Absinthe's door, and beyond.
This volume, collecting Steampunk issues 6-12, continues the madly original saga begun in the Cliffhanger book Steampunk: Manimatron, by the same brilliant creative team of Chris Bachalo and Joe Kelly. Love and war, life and death, truth and lies—nothing is as it seems in the darkly twisted world of Steampunk, and the unpredictable in the only certainty.
Steampunk: Drama Obscura—come inside... but leave your expectations at the door.
Having traded his humanity to the treacherous Absinthe in exchange for a 'cure' for his lady love, Cole finds himself on the front lines of a revolution, trying to take down the man who used him, killed his beloved, and took over half the known world. With a ragtag band of stalwarts, Cole Blaquesmith takes the fight to Lord Absinthe's door, and beyond.
This volume, collecting Steampunk issues 6-12, continues the madly original saga begun in the Cliffhanger book Steampunk: Manimatron, by the same brilliant creative team of Chris Bachalo and Joe Kelly. Love and war, life and death, truth and lies—nothing is as it seems in the darkly twisted world of Steampunk, and the unpredictable in the only certainty.
Steampunk: Drama Obscura—come inside... but leave your expectations at the door.
176 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2003
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88 people want to read
About the author
Joe Kelly
1,004 books207 followersLibrarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 28, 2017
Great series, well written, solid art... unfortunately the last volume is never to be released.
October 6, 2019
Well written and illustrated beautifully.
March 10, 2014
For all the readers tired of the run-of-the-mill comic books and superhero stories, “Steam Punk” is a delicious break from the norm. While still dealing with the well-known themes of good versus bad and the struggle for redemption, “Steam Punk” unfolded its stories and ideas in such a rich and complex way, it became something never before or since seen in the comic book industry.
Taking place in an alternate version of Victorian England, the reader follows the journey of Cole Blaquesmith, part man, part monster. Awakening after a century-long slumber and struck by a horrible case of amnesia, Blaquesmith discovers his body has been mutilated to house a furnace in his chest and a steam-powered limb for an arm. Desperate to find out who has done this to him, and why bits of memory of a long lost love keep washing over him in his sleep, he sets out into a steam-powered world to find answers.
The infamously complex artwork by Chris Bachalo might be hard to read at times, but taking your time and savoring all the detail he puts in his illustrations pays off big time. This story gives the brilliant Canadian artist the opportunity to play with visual clues, outrageous framing and wonderful character design. Pages are never as clean or clear as for instance Tintin, but the murky coloring and busy compositions fit the style and tone of the tale.
The story is surprisingly big in scope and the action is nearly nonstop. This wonderful mash-up of Star Wars meets Alice in Wonderland works from the very start, and after the highly recommended first tome, “Manimatron”, “Drama Obscura” initially shows the same level of quality and outrageous fun.
It’s only towards the end that the plot’s moving at such ridiculous speed, that it felt as though pages were missing from my copy. Rather than following a narrative, reading “Drama Obscura” became a tumble through various scenes. Understanding how one moment is followed up by another made increasingly less sense.
Knowing beforehand that Kelly and Bachalo were never able to finish their “Steam Punk” story arc, made this a bittersweet reading experience from the get-go. Seeing an initially brilliant comic book fall apart the way it does in “Drama Obscura”, is even more depressing.
Taking place in an alternate version of Victorian England, the reader follows the journey of Cole Blaquesmith, part man, part monster. Awakening after a century-long slumber and struck by a horrible case of amnesia, Blaquesmith discovers his body has been mutilated to house a furnace in his chest and a steam-powered limb for an arm. Desperate to find out who has done this to him, and why bits of memory of a long lost love keep washing over him in his sleep, he sets out into a steam-powered world to find answers.
The infamously complex artwork by Chris Bachalo might be hard to read at times, but taking your time and savoring all the detail he puts in his illustrations pays off big time. This story gives the brilliant Canadian artist the opportunity to play with visual clues, outrageous framing and wonderful character design. Pages are never as clean or clear as for instance Tintin, but the murky coloring and busy compositions fit the style and tone of the tale.
The story is surprisingly big in scope and the action is nearly nonstop. This wonderful mash-up of Star Wars meets Alice in Wonderland works from the very start, and after the highly recommended first tome, “Manimatron”, “Drama Obscura” initially shows the same level of quality and outrageous fun.
It’s only towards the end that the plot’s moving at such ridiculous speed, that it felt as though pages were missing from my copy. Rather than following a narrative, reading “Drama Obscura” became a tumble through various scenes. Understanding how one moment is followed up by another made increasingly less sense.
Knowing beforehand that Kelly and Bachalo were never able to finish their “Steam Punk” story arc, made this a bittersweet reading experience from the get-go. Seeing an initially brilliant comic book fall apart the way it does in “Drama Obscura”, is even more depressing.
January 19, 2008
No one really seemed to get into to this series, and I think that's lame.
The story is set in Victorian London, but in an alternate time line where the world has more modern technology than true history records. All this technology however is powered in an old fashion way, mainly by burning coal. There is no electricity, so everything is gas-lit, while these incredibly complex machines rumble through the narrow cobbled streets billowing clouds of smog.
The story is a romance/action/comedy, about a man trying to piece together a blurry past and discover what happened to his lost love from his former life.
All this sounds pretty run-of-the-mill, and I won't deny that's true--but it is in the presentation of this story that one really finds the originality of this book. Both the style of the writing and of the art is unique for a "mainstream" style comic. This originality, however, is also the source of most people's distaste for the book. The art is dense and detailed and the coloring is purposefully murky, causing the reader to spend more time than usual trying to discern what is occurring on the page. And the dialogue doesn't help either--it's equally dense and stylized. Nothing is laid out for you, but it is all there on the page. It just takes a little thought and concentration to appreciate. Perhaps the problem is that most comic readers aren't used to having to think when they read. That's disappointing.
This book is worth checking-out simply to experience the wonderfully interesting page layouts. It definitely breaks away from the standard comic story-telling format.
The story is set in Victorian London, but in an alternate time line where the world has more modern technology than true history records. All this technology however is powered in an old fashion way, mainly by burning coal. There is no electricity, so everything is gas-lit, while these incredibly complex machines rumble through the narrow cobbled streets billowing clouds of smog.
The story is a romance/action/comedy, about a man trying to piece together a blurry past and discover what happened to his lost love from his former life.
All this sounds pretty run-of-the-mill, and I won't deny that's true--but it is in the presentation of this story that one really finds the originality of this book. Both the style of the writing and of the art is unique for a "mainstream" style comic. This originality, however, is also the source of most people's distaste for the book. The art is dense and detailed and the coloring is purposefully murky, causing the reader to spend more time than usual trying to discern what is occurring on the page. And the dialogue doesn't help either--it's equally dense and stylized. Nothing is laid out for you, but it is all there on the page. It just takes a little thought and concentration to appreciate. Perhaps the problem is that most comic readers aren't used to having to think when they read. That's disappointing.
This book is worth checking-out simply to experience the wonderfully interesting page layouts. It definitely breaks away from the standard comic story-telling format.
March 2, 2017
Chris bachelo and Joe Kelly are one of my favorite creative teams in comic books also including Chris Bachelos work with jeph Loeb on The Witching Hour Chris Bachelo has highly stylized artwork unconventional organic panel to panel work the team lends to largely organic artwork and character based styalized dialogue and narrative nonlinear story and creative pagework and non formulaic panel work largely chrarcter based takes place in a time past time where Blaquesmith leads a team of well crafted characters a lot of the supporting characters more interensting than the main character ...to take on absinthe in this case one of his cohorts while being trailed by the poetically written and internally driven Faust this is a modern post apocalypse set in europe while still being modern enough with extremely good artwork to keep this mid 90sanother great cliffhanger publication fresh to stay at pace with while also lending a bit to read into though there are some cultural reference for sake of story setting great book awesome read love the comic book pagework also artwork
November 23, 2014
More of the same. A decent story, but more often than not I had no idea what was going on in the drawing, and missed important parts of the storyline this way. Again, I had to flip back some pages and dissect the drawings to figure out what was happening. I also found myself skipping the art work and just reading on, to avoid getting lost in figuring out what I was looking at. It gets better in the second half where the art work gets more room to breath and actions are spread out over multiple pages. All in all, not that bad, not that great either. I feel 3 stars is quite generous.
June 21, 2012
excellent characters and dialogue, fun story, amazingly detailed art. really bummed this didn't continue, i would love to read more, especially as the story was really starting to expand the world a bit at the end, as well as throw some twists in.
August 21, 2013
I loved this worthy second volume of the "Steampunk" graphic novel as well. Recommended. For a detailed review, please visit my blog: http://tesatorul.blogspot.ro/2009/02/....
January 29, 2009
4-star art, 1-star story, 0-stars for keeping their publishing schedule.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews