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Neil Gaiman's Teknophage #1
The Teknophage, a 65 million year old reptile, holds the keys to the universe. An immensely powerful being, Henry Phage has spent his lifetime as a conqueror, using his immense psychic powers and his ability to manipulate wormholes in order to take over planets across galaxies and feed upon the suffering of the denizens within, effectively making himself a god. From The Phage Building, located on the planet Kahlighoul, The Teknophage plots and plans the expansion of his intergalactic empire. However, when he turns his sights towards Kahlighoul's sister planet, Earth, the Teknophage encounters a source of resistance that he did not expect.
232 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
October 2, 2022
This series holds up better than some of the other comics from Tekno Comics. The Teknophage is one of the vilest creations in Neil Gaiman's imagination. He's a 60-million old lizard with telepathic powers. He rules over his world in a steampunk city that rolls across the world. The stories featured within are pretty heavy and depressing. They tell tales of people fighting back against the unending oppression under Henry Phage's company.
October 24, 2015
This one was hard to put down because it was so damn bizarre.
In this collections, we get both trades written about Teknophage and a single comic that tied together a number of the characters that Gaiman created for this world.
We start off with the single issue which centers on a storytelling contest between Teknophage and Lady Justice. It was a neat little way to start the collection, but left me more confused than anything.
Next comes the best piece of the collection, where we get the story of Rob and the Teknophage. Rob is the type of man that would sell his mother for a buck. We catch up with him after swindling an old woman out of her farm.
At this time, he is told the story of her daughter who had been abducted by aliens years ago. After finding some tech onsite and relaying this to his boss, he is abducted as well.
Now in another universe, he connects with the girl and they quickly try to game the system. He falls for her immediately, even though she keeps stealing from him and running away.
He discovers along the way that there is a resistance forming to the Teknophage and becomes part of the plan.
Ok, so the big question is what is the Teknophage. Throughout this collection, we learn a bit about where he came from and how he became this lizard-man creature that has lived 65 million years and obtained astounding powers along the way.
Seeing the potential evil in Rob, he makes a few moves here an there to ensure that he becomes a part of his organization and moves up a bit along the way. The reason for this is that the Teknophage eats people and creatures and the more they have done at the expense of others makes them more tasty to him.
This wife has potential as well and she is taken to chronicle his history. Through this we get much of the backstory on the Teknophage and a few interesting stories about encounters as well.
In the second collection, we find out how the Teknophage showed up on Earth twice. Once, he just missed the dinosaurs and arrived after their extinction. The second time was in the Garden of Eden where he became the mythical serpent that helped us to sin and therefore become tastier.
This entering himself into the religious process ends up being his downfall in the end.
This story was a little hard to keep up with at times as it kept introducing new ideas and terms without a ton of information about them. This really keeps the reader on their toes and makes it difficult to really judge the material without looking at the whole of it.
The idea of the Teknophage was pretty bonkers, but for the most part worked really well in the world that Gaiman created.
Unfortunately, I never found myself really able to connect with the main characters, though, which kept it from becoming a great story for me.
The art is a bit hit and miss. It is mostly on the positive side, but can switch in style and quality pretty quickly from story to story and even panel to panel on occasion. The highs are really good though, and often include the Teknophage himself.
Overall, I did really enjoy the story. If you are a fan of quirky, crazy comics, I think this is a must buy.
In this collections, we get both trades written about Teknophage and a single comic that tied together a number of the characters that Gaiman created for this world.
We start off with the single issue which centers on a storytelling contest between Teknophage and Lady Justice. It was a neat little way to start the collection, but left me more confused than anything.
Next comes the best piece of the collection, where we get the story of Rob and the Teknophage. Rob is the type of man that would sell his mother for a buck. We catch up with him after swindling an old woman out of her farm.
At this time, he is told the story of her daughter who had been abducted by aliens years ago. After finding some tech onsite and relaying this to his boss, he is abducted as well.
Now in another universe, he connects with the girl and they quickly try to game the system. He falls for her immediately, even though she keeps stealing from him and running away.
He discovers along the way that there is a resistance forming to the Teknophage and becomes part of the plan.
Ok, so the big question is what is the Teknophage. Throughout this collection, we learn a bit about where he came from and how he became this lizard-man creature that has lived 65 million years and obtained astounding powers along the way.
Seeing the potential evil in Rob, he makes a few moves here an there to ensure that he becomes a part of his organization and moves up a bit along the way. The reason for this is that the Teknophage eats people and creatures and the more they have done at the expense of others makes them more tasty to him.
This wife has potential as well and she is taken to chronicle his history. Through this we get much of the backstory on the Teknophage and a few interesting stories about encounters as well.
In the second collection, we find out how the Teknophage showed up on Earth twice. Once, he just missed the dinosaurs and arrived after their extinction. The second time was in the Garden of Eden where he became the mythical serpent that helped us to sin and therefore become tastier.
This entering himself into the religious process ends up being his downfall in the end.
This story was a little hard to keep up with at times as it kept introducing new ideas and terms without a ton of information about them. This really keeps the reader on their toes and makes it difficult to really judge the material without looking at the whole of it.
The idea of the Teknophage was pretty bonkers, but for the most part worked really well in the world that Gaiman created.
Unfortunately, I never found myself really able to connect with the main characters, though, which kept it from becoming a great story for me.
The art is a bit hit and miss. It is mostly on the positive side, but can switch in style and quality pretty quickly from story to story and even panel to panel on occasion. The highs are really good though, and often include the Teknophage himself.
Overall, I did really enjoy the story. If you are a fan of quirky, crazy comics, I think this is a must buy.
April 6, 2016
took me a long time to finish this. it just wasn't doing it for me. that's ok though, I don't have to be obsessed with everything Neil Gaiman does.
February 7, 2017
Pretty violent, but it isn't often you come across a story where the main character is unequivocally evil... and always wins or survives.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 22, 2020
Big picture first. ‘Teknophage’ is one of several comics published back in the early 1990s by Laurie Silvers and Mitchell Rubenstein, who created the Sci-Fi Channel. Comics were booming and they thought the time was ripe for it. Neil Gaiman, a rising star then, a superstar now, was invited to come up with concepts to be scripted by others. The result was three titles, ‘Teknophage’, ‘Mr. Hero’ and ‘Lady Justice’, which tied together one big cosmic story in a way pioneered by Jack Kirby with his ‘New Gods’ epic. When bust followed boom, they all went under but have been reissued in book form by the enterprising people at NBM/Papercutz under their Super Genius imprint.
Teknophage Vol. # 1 opens with a story from Wheel Of Worlds # 0, plotted by Neil Gaiman and John Ney Reiber. This introduces us to a desolate and desperate world called Albion, where Adam Cain, Mr Hero, Lady Justice and the Teknophage meet in a slum and swap stories. It’s an odd introduction but sort of sets the stage.
After that, the comic is all about Teknophage, a devil of a villain. He was born into the dominant reptilian species on the world of Kalighoul and killed all his rivals. When apes evolved into humans, he found them particularly tasty and, consuming their souls along with their bodies, gave him long life. Then he discovered wormholes and could travel between dimensions to alternate versions of his home planet: Avalon, Albion and Earth. He also discovered that humans could be easily tempted to evil acts by lust for wealth and had great fun with that, building a vast commercial empire.
After the introductory tale, there are two longer stories divided into instalments. The first five issues of ‘Teknophage’ were written by Rick Veitch, pencilled by Bryan Talbot and inked and coloured by Angus McKie. The bright, gaudy colouring is a major factor in the art. The story is about nasty capitalism as the Teknophage runs a gigantic, evil corporation which chews people up and spits them out, often literally. His useful heavy mob are the Vulgar Bootmen, robots powered by human souls He roams the world in his mobile office block which is powered by a furnace using a mixture of steam hydraulics and alchemy. Various underlings compete to impress him. My favourite was Baron Wasteland who salutes his master by thumping his chest and shouting ‘Hideous Rex’. The white-collar workers are kept going with Koffup, a brown drink that contains adrenaline. There’s a Sublimey machine to broadcast subliminal messages on television and lure people into sin. These neat touches add depth and flavour to the complex plot.
Issues #6-10 of ‘Teknophage’ take a different tack under writer Paul Jenkins and artist Al Davison. In this section, there is a more religious tone to the proceedings. The Teknophage himself is a sort of god of evil, though he lays no claim to creating the worlds. There are a few oddballs who think he can be opposed, inspired by a Christ-like figure who’s been kept in the lowest dungeons for the past few centuries. A tonsured monk, a nun and several others plan to break into Tek’s headquarters and overthrow him. It’s another good story.
The art is of that style pioneered by ‘2000AD’ comic and so is the visceral violence, nudity and torture it conveys. Alan Moore led the way back then. In their zeal to burst the bounds of traditional comics and the Comics Code Authority, these pioneers were inevitably excessive so be warned this is not suitable for children. For adults, it’s pretty solid fare. You get over 200 pages of well-crafted story along with informative articles explaining how it all came about. Kudos to Papercutz for bringing this back from the vaults.
Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/
Teknophage Vol. # 1 opens with a story from Wheel Of Worlds # 0, plotted by Neil Gaiman and John Ney Reiber. This introduces us to a desolate and desperate world called Albion, where Adam Cain, Mr Hero, Lady Justice and the Teknophage meet in a slum and swap stories. It’s an odd introduction but sort of sets the stage.
After that, the comic is all about Teknophage, a devil of a villain. He was born into the dominant reptilian species on the world of Kalighoul and killed all his rivals. When apes evolved into humans, he found them particularly tasty and, consuming their souls along with their bodies, gave him long life. Then he discovered wormholes and could travel between dimensions to alternate versions of his home planet: Avalon, Albion and Earth. He also discovered that humans could be easily tempted to evil acts by lust for wealth and had great fun with that, building a vast commercial empire.
After the introductory tale, there are two longer stories divided into instalments. The first five issues of ‘Teknophage’ were written by Rick Veitch, pencilled by Bryan Talbot and inked and coloured by Angus McKie. The bright, gaudy colouring is a major factor in the art. The story is about nasty capitalism as the Teknophage runs a gigantic, evil corporation which chews people up and spits them out, often literally. His useful heavy mob are the Vulgar Bootmen, robots powered by human souls He roams the world in his mobile office block which is powered by a furnace using a mixture of steam hydraulics and alchemy. Various underlings compete to impress him. My favourite was Baron Wasteland who salutes his master by thumping his chest and shouting ‘Hideous Rex’. The white-collar workers are kept going with Koffup, a brown drink that contains adrenaline. There’s a Sublimey machine to broadcast subliminal messages on television and lure people into sin. These neat touches add depth and flavour to the complex plot.
Issues #6-10 of ‘Teknophage’ take a different tack under writer Paul Jenkins and artist Al Davison. In this section, there is a more religious tone to the proceedings. The Teknophage himself is a sort of god of evil, though he lays no claim to creating the worlds. There are a few oddballs who think he can be opposed, inspired by a Christ-like figure who’s been kept in the lowest dungeons for the past few centuries. A tonsured monk, a nun and several others plan to break into Tek’s headquarters and overthrow him. It’s another good story.
The art is of that style pioneered by ‘2000AD’ comic and so is the visceral violence, nudity and torture it conveys. Alan Moore led the way back then. In their zeal to burst the bounds of traditional comics and the Comics Code Authority, these pioneers were inevitably excessive so be warned this is not suitable for children. For adults, it’s pretty solid fare. You get over 200 pages of well-crafted story along with informative articles explaining how it all came about. Kudos to Papercutz for bringing this back from the vaults.
Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/
March 20, 2022
Despite the title, these stories were not written by Neil Gaiman, they are just based on characters that he created. In the late 80s and early 90s, there was a renaissance in the comic industry as well as in animated cartoons, and creators could be as off the wall as they cared to be. Writers like Frank Miller and Alan Moore were breaking new ground and the graphic novel came into its own.
A host of comics publishers, both underground and mainstream came and went in a short period of time. Among them was Tekno Comix which introduced Gaiman's Lady Justice, Mr. Hero, and the Teknopahage, an intelligent dinosaur that has been around for millennia and can travel across the multiverse, controlling worlds with his psychic abilities.
This is one of the most bizarre comics that I've read, brutally violent with an almost dreamscape quality, it fits in perfectly with the era that gave us Watchmen, Frank Miller's reimagined Batman, Max Headroom, Ren and Stimpy, MTV's Liquid Television, and Aeon Flux.
A host of comics publishers, both underground and mainstream came and went in a short period of time. Among them was Tekno Comix which introduced Gaiman's Lady Justice, Mr. Hero, and the Teknopahage, an intelligent dinosaur that has been around for millennia and can travel across the multiverse, controlling worlds with his psychic abilities.
This is one of the most bizarre comics that I've read, brutally violent with an almost dreamscape quality, it fits in perfectly with the era that gave us Watchmen, Frank Miller's reimagined Batman, Max Headroom, Ren and Stimpy, MTV's Liquid Television, and Aeon Flux.
March 4, 2017
It's hard to really get behind a series where the titular character is an immortal, evil reptile who dictatorially oppresses an entire multiverse. That said, I feel that I was lucky to have picked this up cold. I knew nothing of Teknophage or Tekno Comics before I saw this TPB in my local library and grabbed it because Neil Gaiman's name was on the cover. Despite the somewhat gory art and stories and the evil of Henry Phage himself, I really enjoyed this one.
May 26, 2020
Teknophage, da un'idea di Neil Gaiman realizzata da Rick Veitch e Bryan Talbot. Una storia visionaria in un multiverso distopico, che vede le forze capitalistiche dello spietato caimano gigante fagocitare letteralmente i suoi seguaci. Un fumetto introvabile, che vale la pena di leggere, è ora disponibile tra gli scaffali della nostra biblioteca.
#palermo #altroquando #cultura #fumetti #biblioteca #manga #rickveitch #bibliotecaSRA
#palermo #altroquando #cultura #fumetti #biblioteca #manga #rickveitch #bibliotecaSRA
June 3, 2022
This is one of those comics that was a loose napkin concept by Neil Gaiman and in lesser hands would have been terrible. But when you have Rick Veitch and Bryan Talbot on the case, it's a nice little mean-spirited character piece.
I think the Tecknophage is one of my favorite villians, he's vile. I want him dead. But boy is it pretty, graphic and interesting.
I think the Tecknophage is one of my favorite villians, he's vile. I want him dead. But boy is it pretty, graphic and interesting.
July 10, 2023
No clue what I started on when I picked it up, was not expecting one of most graphic (in eh… every sense of the term) anti-capitalist stories I ever read. He makes money from human souls, for crying out loud!
Got me the way all Neil Gaiman stories get me: I get freaked out, I feel nauesous, I say thank you and pick up another one of his works.
Got me the way all Neil Gaiman stories get me: I get freaked out, I feel nauesous, I say thank you and pick up another one of his works.
July 24, 2025
I did not hate this book, but I did not like any of the characters in it either, What I mean about like, is a character I could sympathize with, care about what happens to them. The story is told well and the worlds are spectacular and very creative. The Art was amazing and for that at least, I will say this is a good read.
March 4, 2019
I honestly don't even know what to say about this. What a wild fucking ride.
I can say, though, that (and this is probably a highly unpopular opinion) Neil Gaiman is infinitely better at writing comics than books.
I can say, though, that (and this is probably a highly unpopular opinion) Neil Gaiman is infinitely better at writing comics than books.
November 22, 2024
This had a bit more going for it. Still not entirely my cup of tea but had more of a Gaiman flavor, sensibility, and pacing. I found most of the individual story arcs to be engaging and to have satisfying endings.
November 13, 2017
WOW! Just wow!
July 25, 2018
Surprisingly enjoyable lowbrow shenanigans here.
August 30, 2018
I got bored with it about half way through...
October 21, 2018
Neil Gaiman's stories always leave me wanting more.
November 24, 2019
Neil Gaiman is weird.
I love it.
This book was very dark and bloody.
I don't think the Teknophage is a very nice person.
I love it.
This book was very dark and bloody.
I don't think the Teknophage is a very nice person.
December 27, 2019
Very interesting concept and excited to read more! :)
March 15, 2020
Didn’t care for it to be honest. I love the ideas but the actual execution is hopelessly dense. It’s like a lavishly illustrated Wikipedia article, gorgeous to look at but tedious to read.
June 9, 2020
Kind of a confusing story but still some really cool ideas.
October 7, 2020
Below average book with no depth. Interesting idea.
September 10, 2022
accurate description of the world, don't like the giant lizard fool you.
January 3, 2023
I read this because I am a fan of Bryan Talbot. Too bad he didn't write it, because the story is awful. Even Talbot's art isn't enough to salvage this. Not worth reading.
January 13, 2023
Love these comics and the insane, vibrant artwork
November 23, 2023
Good artwork and an interesting story
February 19, 2024
A well written tragedy that never lets up on the utter depression and tragedy of its premise. Scary, sometimes strange and at all times soul devouring. Yeesh!
May 24, 2024
So deeply weird
December 29, 2024
Gross, but fun.
October 29, 2015
3.5 stars - good
This graphic novel was...interesting.
The first three comics (Wheel of Worlds #0, and Teknophage #s 1 and 2) were confusing and I didn't really understand them, but I nevertheless enjoyed them.
Teknophage #s 3 through 6 were good, but gruesome.
Then we had Teknophage #s 7 through 10, which didn't make sense to me. They didn't seem to fit with the story told in the first six issues, so I was lost.
I do not plan to read Volume Two. While this Volume One was good and I sort of enjoyed it, I did not enjoy it enough to want to continue.
This graphic novel was...interesting.
The first three comics (Wheel of Worlds #0, and Teknophage #s 1 and 2) were confusing and I didn't really understand them, but I nevertheless enjoyed them.
Teknophage #s 3 through 6 were good, but gruesome.
Then we had Teknophage #s 7 through 10, which didn't make sense to me. They didn't seem to fit with the story told in the first six issues, so I was lost.
I do not plan to read Volume Two. While this Volume One was good and I sort of enjoyed it, I did not enjoy it enough to want to continue.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews