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The Amory Wars #3.1
The Amory Wars, Volume 1: The Second Stage Turbine Blade
From Coheed & Cambria's Claudio Sanchez, comes a deeper look into the saga behind their best-selling debut album, The Second Stage Turbine Blade! Coheed and Cambria lead a seemingly normal, quiet life with their four children. Yet when villainous forces behind the mysterious keywork reveal hard hitting truth's behind the couple's real nature, a battle begins that crosses all worlds!
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
33 people are currently reading
868 people want to read
About the author
Claudio Sánchez
125 books398 followersClaudio Paul Sanchez III (born March 12, 1978, in Suffern, New York, United States) is an American writer and musician of Puerto Rican and Italian descent best known for being the lead singer and guitarist for the alternative/progressive rock group Coheed and Cambria. He is the creator of the comic book series The Amory Wars, as well as Key of Z and Kill Audio, both co-written with wife Chondra Echert. Sanchez co-authored the novel Year of the Black Rainbow with Peter David.
From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudio...
From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudio...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
June 27, 2022
I've been listening to Coheed & Cambria since 2003, and what could be more awesomely nerdy than a comic series to flesh-out the band's sci-fi epic concept albums?!
Unfortunately, there are so many problems with everything about the effort, from the artwork to the world-building. One of the chief problems is that there's too much thrown at the reader with little-to-no significant set-up; I couldn't even get past the physics of Heaven's Fence: 78 planets, aligned in a triangle and bound together by some energy beam. Do they orbit the stars that are powering them (And what does that mean: powering them? The stars power the planets?) Presumably, planets bound together by beams of light don't rotate, so does that mean there's perpetual day/night on opposite sides of the planets? And why do they live in 90's TV-suburbs when there's futuristic space ships zooming around (Not to mention the questionable choice of using real-life names of places like Jersey City and Paris)?
Additionally, no time is devoted to developing the characters, so their behavior seems implausibly irrational. The reader is dragged along from plot point to point so rapidly that there's no time to take in what's going on or to better understand the characters or get a sense of the mythos, which just keeps getting added to (It probably would have been better if there had been six issues just about the first issue). And despite all of the convoluted stuff floating around, it still kind of feels like "good" and "bad" are overly simplified. The story has some promising elements, but it's all too cluttered and rushed through to digest. Put another way, nothing about it really grabbed my interest, and that's coming from someone who has wanted a fuller picture of Claudio Sanchez's vague space opera-themed lyrics for nearly two decades.
Uninvested, but I'll still read up to In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 and Good Apollo I'm Burning Star IV because those are my favorite C&C albums.
Unfortunately, there are so many problems with everything about the effort, from the artwork to the world-building. One of the chief problems is that there's too much thrown at the reader with little-to-no significant set-up; I couldn't even get past the physics of Heaven's Fence: 78 planets, aligned in a triangle and bound together by some energy beam. Do they orbit the stars that are powering them (And what does that mean: powering them? The stars power the planets?) Presumably, planets bound together by beams of light don't rotate, so does that mean there's perpetual day/night on opposite sides of the planets? And why do they live in 90's TV-suburbs when there's futuristic space ships zooming around (Not to mention the questionable choice of using real-life names of places like Jersey City and Paris)?
Additionally, no time is devoted to developing the characters, so their behavior seems implausibly irrational. The reader is dragged along from plot point to point so rapidly that there's no time to take in what's going on or to better understand the characters or get a sense of the mythos, which just keeps getting added to (It probably would have been better if there had been six issues just about the first issue). And despite all of the convoluted stuff floating around, it still kind of feels like "good" and "bad" are overly simplified. The story has some promising elements, but it's all too cluttered and rushed through to digest. Put another way, nothing about it really grabbed my interest, and that's coming from someone who has wanted a fuller picture of Claudio Sanchez's vague space opera-themed lyrics for nearly two decades.
Uninvested, but I'll still read up to In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 and Good Apollo I'm Burning Star IV because those are my favorite C&C albums.
January 13, 2012
(First and foremost, I read all of the books in this series so I will be posting a full series review if that’s possible, thanks.)
The Amory Wars: The Second Stage Turbine Blade, starts off running, you are thrown into the dream of one, Coheed Killgannon who you later learn is part of an anti terrorist group called the KBI. He dreams about killing a space crew and escaping a space station. He later learns that the dream he has is part of a disease called Monstar which he passed on through heredity to his children. His wife, Cambria also has this disease and is also part of the KBI. About halfway through the first volume you meet Deftinwolf who tells Coheed that he has to kill his children because it is the only way for the universe to survive. The children of the couple have the Sinstar Virus is an evolution of the Monstar. Sinstar is able to shut down stars by cooling them down. So it could potentially destroy the universe. It becomes increasingly difficult for the two, because Coheed poisons his first two children and can’t make the decision on how to kill the other two. The book however primarily focuses on Claudio, the only surviving child, and his experience through heavens fence (The Universe).
My opinion about this book is really positive. I loved this series, it was absolutely perfect. Every word fit the situation and it was really exciting. While also showing how much it would suck to be chased 3 superpowers. It shows love really well too, this is one of the books you can’t really explain accurately because too much happens to really explain in under an hour, Or in this case, in under 10 pages. The entire story seems unbelievable, but borderline realistic.
If I was able to rate this book, I would rate it considerably higher than the rubric allows. At least 20/5, but for purposes of this review I will keep it to 5/5. As I said in my opinion the words fit seemingly perfect together. It also gives you the option to listen to music by the band, Coheed and Cambria, to further understand the story.
The Amory Wars: The Second Stage Turbine Blade, starts off running, you are thrown into the dream of one, Coheed Killgannon who you later learn is part of an anti terrorist group called the KBI. He dreams about killing a space crew and escaping a space station. He later learns that the dream he has is part of a disease called Monstar which he passed on through heredity to his children. His wife, Cambria also has this disease and is also part of the KBI. About halfway through the first volume you meet Deftinwolf who tells Coheed that he has to kill his children because it is the only way for the universe to survive. The children of the couple have the Sinstar Virus is an evolution of the Monstar. Sinstar is able to shut down stars by cooling them down. So it could potentially destroy the universe. It becomes increasingly difficult for the two, because Coheed poisons his first two children and can’t make the decision on how to kill the other two. The book however primarily focuses on Claudio, the only surviving child, and his experience through heavens fence (The Universe).
My opinion about this book is really positive. I loved this series, it was absolutely perfect. Every word fit the situation and it was really exciting. While also showing how much it would suck to be chased 3 superpowers. It shows love really well too, this is one of the books you can’t really explain accurately because too much happens to really explain in under an hour, Or in this case, in under 10 pages. The entire story seems unbelievable, but borderline realistic.
If I was able to rate this book, I would rate it considerably higher than the rubric allows. At least 20/5, but for purposes of this review I will keep it to 5/5. As I said in my opinion the words fit seemingly perfect together. It also gives you the option to listen to music by the band, Coheed and Cambria, to further understand the story.
February 1, 2011
Two and a half stars. Unimpressive art and somewhat boring plot / characters, but something is drawing me in, so I'll probably read more. Stupid Coheed and Cambria being so awesome I can't help but read their crappy comics.
August 30, 2019
I’m a gigantic Coheed and Cambria’s fan, but this book is just...alright.
I think the biggest problem is that it throws so much info at you, but you have no time to really process what any of it means. Characters appear to behave irrationally, though you feel like you could maybe understand what they’re doing if you knew their perspective. It feels like I’m eavesdropping on someone else’s conversation and have no context to what they’re talking about—which, considering I’ve been listening to Coheed and Cambria for about 15 years now, should not be the case. I know I’m technically picking up a book or two in the series, but no book should be this baffling.
Also, it’s got that dumb stuff of showing women naked/almost naked all the time, and also a ton of totally unnecessary violence against them, with men left to feel sad about them as fuel for their own adventure. It’s dumb. Why was Claudio the one to survive and not Josephine? That would be more compelling—someone who has gone through hell and now is fighting to survive. Give me that story.
I think the biggest problem is that it throws so much info at you, but you have no time to really process what any of it means. Characters appear to behave irrationally, though you feel like you could maybe understand what they’re doing if you knew their perspective. It feels like I’m eavesdropping on someone else’s conversation and have no context to what they’re talking about—which, considering I’ve been listening to Coheed and Cambria for about 15 years now, should not be the case. I know I’m technically picking up a book or two in the series, but no book should be this baffling.
Also, it’s got that dumb stuff of showing women naked/almost naked all the time, and also a ton of totally unnecessary violence against them, with men left to feel sad about them as fuel for their own adventure. It’s dumb. Why was Claudio the one to survive and not Josephine? That would be more compelling—someone who has gone through hell and now is fighting to survive. Give me that story.
February 28, 2020
This was not as bad as I feared it would be but not as good as I hoped it could be too. Being a comic based on concept albums of a prog rock band, really a lot could have gone wrong with this. The reality is, it's a decent enough sci-fi comic, but it's also not really like... exceptional? It was more coherent than I was fearing it would be but also... it takes itself super seriously and it is like... a little ridiculous at times? I mean one guys name is Mayo Deftinwolf. A plot point involves weaponized dragon flies. I wonder how this comic would come across to someone unfamiliar with Coheed and Cambria as a band. I do think the Coheed superfan would probably really appreciate this. I do appreciate that they also included the 2 first comics from when this whole concept was known as "Bag Online Adventures" instead of "Amory Wars." The redone comics are a big leap forward from these, but it's interesting to see the humble beginnings. Ultimately, decent enough but room for it to be better.
November 11, 2025
Just... really, really hard to follow.
August 17, 2025
not as bad as other reviews had me worried it'd be, but still far from being as good as the music itself.
i bloody love Coheed and Cambria. i'm starting to ask myself recently if they're close to overtaking fellow proggers Rush as my favourite band, a position they've been in for 6 years. it's a big label to give them but Claudio is simply that good at music writing, both in the way the lyrics tell the story of this saga (and even more so the next cause most albums manage to be even better than the last) while allowing every song to be clever in its own right but also in the way their genre-bending and constant experimentation gets me, someone who is very much not music theory brained, to think about, like, metre and stuff. all this to say i feel an obligation to read this as an extension of the music and i'm probably extremely biased.
anyway, there's, in theory a lot to like and it's often the stuff i like about the music. the world is itself, while built a little hastily to fully take in, is fascinating and just a cool idea. central to that is the keywork, an energy field powered by seven stars and the (sort of) afterlife holding together 78 planets in an intricate triangle, and something i've found interesting about the world since i first listened to the Afterman double album in which it's most fully explored. on top of that, a lot of the planets within it that we get to explore here are visually interesting and there's certainly more of that to come. another aspect of the worldbuilding i liked that i didn't know about going in was the darkly realistic minutiae of Ryan's tyranny, including how his empire treats lower castes of intergalactic society, which involves prison/slaver colonies that then become the sci-fi equivalent of a death camp which he's also found a way of exploiting as an energy source. additionally, i like the tragic structure, somewhere between Romeo and Juliet and the Dark Phoenix Saga, which, in the case of the album on which this arc is based, sometimes puts me off of re-listening due to how upsetting it can be (though being tragic is also something the Afterman is best at). finally, on this side of things, i enjoyed that the band's namesakes, as characters, got to shine here, more than i thought they would. knowing the basic plot outline of the album, one would think they exclusively spend their time suffering and end up as the Owen and Baroo to Claudio's Luke, but instead they dod put up a pretty good and often entertaining fight, especially Cambria, who gets plenty of fun use out of her telepathy and telekinesis.
in terms of what i didn't like as much: the dialogue is sometimes lacking a certain je ne sais quoi, which comics usually need to avoid being nothing but cool action (while there's plenty of it being cool isn't enough sometimes) and the narration takes the Jim Schooter maxim of every issue being someone's first (so you have to explain who everyone is every time) a little too far. also the art isn't my favourite but i knew that because i've never been too partial to art from the early days of digital colouring when nobody knew how to best use that technique. also, for such an ambitious space opera, it feels weird to start on such a mundane planet with no tangible differences from IRL earth, i know the point of the hero's journey (which i'm excited to see Claudio go on) is to start in a normal world but Tatooine was never just America, y'know?
basically, if i wasn't already a fan i don't know if i'd be continuing but i am because it's been twenty years so plenty of time for improvement and SSTB is far from my favourite Coheed album anyway so reading the comics of those i like more (especially GAIBS4V1FFTTEOM) will hopefully fare better.
i bloody love Coheed and Cambria. i'm starting to ask myself recently if they're close to overtaking fellow proggers Rush as my favourite band, a position they've been in for 6 years. it's a big label to give them but Claudio is simply that good at music writing, both in the way the lyrics tell the story of this saga (and even more so the next cause most albums manage to be even better than the last) while allowing every song to be clever in its own right but also in the way their genre-bending and constant experimentation gets me, someone who is very much not music theory brained, to think about, like, metre and stuff. all this to say i feel an obligation to read this as an extension of the music and i'm probably extremely biased.
anyway, there's, in theory a lot to like and it's often the stuff i like about the music. the world is itself, while built a little hastily to fully take in, is fascinating and just a cool idea. central to that is the keywork, an energy field powered by seven stars and the (sort of) afterlife holding together 78 planets in an intricate triangle, and something i've found interesting about the world since i first listened to the Afterman double album in which it's most fully explored. on top of that, a lot of the planets within it that we get to explore here are visually interesting and there's certainly more of that to come. another aspect of the worldbuilding i liked that i didn't know about going in was the darkly realistic minutiae of Ryan's tyranny, including how his empire treats lower castes of intergalactic society, which involves prison/slaver colonies that then become the sci-fi equivalent of a death camp which he's also found a way of exploiting as an energy source. additionally, i like the tragic structure, somewhere between Romeo and Juliet and the Dark Phoenix Saga, which, in the case of the album on which this arc is based, sometimes puts me off of re-listening due to how upsetting it can be (though being tragic is also something the Afterman is best at). finally, on this side of things, i enjoyed that the band's namesakes, as characters, got to shine here, more than i thought they would. knowing the basic plot outline of the album, one would think they exclusively spend their time suffering and end up as the Owen and Baroo to Claudio's Luke, but instead they dod put up a pretty good and often entertaining fight, especially Cambria, who gets plenty of fun use out of her telepathy and telekinesis.
in terms of what i didn't like as much: the dialogue is sometimes lacking a certain je ne sais quoi, which comics usually need to avoid being nothing but cool action (while there's plenty of it being cool isn't enough sometimes) and the narration takes the Jim Schooter maxim of every issue being someone's first (so you have to explain who everyone is every time) a little too far. also the art isn't my favourite but i knew that because i've never been too partial to art from the early days of digital colouring when nobody knew how to best use that technique. also, for such an ambitious space opera, it feels weird to start on such a mundane planet with no tangible differences from IRL earth, i know the point of the hero's journey (which i'm excited to see Claudio go on) is to start in a normal world but Tatooine was never just America, y'know?
basically, if i wasn't already a fan i don't know if i'd be continuing but i am because it's been twenty years so plenty of time for improvement and SSTB is far from my favourite Coheed album anyway so reading the comics of those i like more (especially GAIBS4V1FFTTEOM) will hopefully fare better.
January 6, 2022
I would say I am a new but enthusiastic comics fan and a long-time, moderately enthusiastic Coheed and Cambria fan. One of the things I have always loved about the band is the fact that their songs are indeed about a sci-fi epic. Even though I never had much understanding of the plot (until recently), I had developed a lot of impressions around the tone and themes in the song lyrics. But for me, the complexity and emotion I had always felt communicated musically didn’t translate into the comic AT ALL. I don’t NECESSARILY think this is because it’s a bad story, but the comic needed to give more attention to world-building, character development, and employ a more empathetic style of art in order to work for me. I mean, it looks like the family starts off living in some kind of TV-stereotype suburbia, including all the women having the same exaggerated hourglass figure. This automatically made me feel like I was reading some nostalgic man-fantasy (mantasy?) and it turned me off. Then, beyond this suburban home world, I never gain a feel for what kind of narrative universe Heaven’s Fence is or what its story could even potentially be trying to tell us. Those are my general issues, but I also have some specific gripes regarding the plot…
[SPOILERS BELOW]
I just don’t understand how one day a very suspicious (if powerful) stranger tells you that your four children have an apocalypse-inducing virus that will become activated when they reach 23 years of age (from which your youngest are still at least 15 years off) and so you must kill them all later tonight—or they will fall into the wrong hands and die even more torturous deaths, and you’re like, “aw darn it… I guess so...” and when you get home your wife agrees, because she has always had the feeling that “it’s true” (as though intuition should go unquestioned when you’re also taking seriously that at least some of your body parts and all your formative memories were implanted by an evil scientist).
For one thing, it is baffling that the bad guys here (who appear to be Pure Bad and have no other motivations than get more badness and power) gave Coheed that window of opportunity, if the only goals were to kill the kids and capture the parents. If they were hoping to get the parents to come in a more docile manner, wouldn’t it be better to “kidnap” (stealth-kill) the kids and then trick the parents into thinking they had to go off-world to be reunited with them? For another thing, if you were a loving parent and were given ANY amount of time to try and hide your kids to save their lives, wouldn’t you do it? Wouldn’t you want to think, even if the doomsday virus thing is true, that at least the youngest of your kiddos might live to see the invention of some cure? Or other means of mitigation? Don’t you think you might be able to use your special virusy status to your family’s advantage in negotiations? I need to know why other options were dismissed, or weren't even considered!
I know that my questions have some grounding, because first of all, “it” wasn’t true—Coheed was lied to about the actual danger their children posed, especially Josephine. Second of all, escaping with or hiding the children seems feasible enough in retrospect, since Claudio was able to escape initial capture simply by missing his curfew and getting stuck in local traffic.
Basically I was so disturbed by the opening episodes' seemingly needless filicide (in addition to the rape!) that I had a hard time getting past it. I really needed something compelling in the rest of the narrative that would take me away from it, embed it in a world where such violence would make sense, or offer some kind of implicit commentary on the insane wrongness of those acts, anything to put them into perspective. But what follows is instead a convoluted play-by-play in which there is never time for reflection and most characters’ behavior is irrational or inexplicable. Readers have little sense of characters’ inner states and motivations beyond the most basic drive for survival, or “good characters=know how to love and want to save universe”, “bad characters=only know greed and want to destroy universe”. The workings of the KBI-virus-astrophysics interplay are even more inscrutable and seem to be made up as things go along, such that readers have little sense of what is ever actually at stake. Claudio’s less dramatic storyline is actually more compelling than his parents’, but it is also disappointingly familiar… The whole time, I felt like this volume was rushing through events and getting a list of deaths out of the way so our self-sacrificing misfit-loner-orphan-hero/prophesied chosen one could have a dark and compelling backstory before he steps out of the shadows to exact revenge, save the universe, etc. [And why does only Claudio get access to his inherited superpowers? Why doesn't anything get activated in his older sister when she experiences nothing but mortal danger in her brief story arc? Missed opportunity for a badass character there.] Anyway, it leaves me wondering if I should give the next volume a chance, as things might calm down and take a more sensible pace, or if I’m better off left with vague imaginings of an underlying sci-fi epic as I continue listening to my favorite Coheed and Cambria albums?
[SPOILERS BELOW]
I just don’t understand how one day a very suspicious (if powerful) stranger tells you that your four children have an apocalypse-inducing virus that will become activated when they reach 23 years of age (from which your youngest are still at least 15 years off) and so you must kill them all later tonight—or they will fall into the wrong hands and die even more torturous deaths, and you’re like, “aw darn it… I guess so...” and when you get home your wife agrees, because she has always had the feeling that “it’s true” (as though intuition should go unquestioned when you’re also taking seriously that at least some of your body parts and all your formative memories were implanted by an evil scientist).
For one thing, it is baffling that the bad guys here (who appear to be Pure Bad and have no other motivations than get more badness and power) gave Coheed that window of opportunity, if the only goals were to kill the kids and capture the parents. If they were hoping to get the parents to come in a more docile manner, wouldn’t it be better to “kidnap” (stealth-kill) the kids and then trick the parents into thinking they had to go off-world to be reunited with them? For another thing, if you were a loving parent and were given ANY amount of time to try and hide your kids to save their lives, wouldn’t you do it? Wouldn’t you want to think, even if the doomsday virus thing is true, that at least the youngest of your kiddos might live to see the invention of some cure? Or other means of mitigation? Don’t you think you might be able to use your special virusy status to your family’s advantage in negotiations? I need to know why other options were dismissed, or weren't even considered!
I know that my questions have some grounding, because first of all, “it” wasn’t true—Coheed was lied to about the actual danger their children posed, especially Josephine. Second of all, escaping with or hiding the children seems feasible enough in retrospect, since Claudio was able to escape initial capture simply by missing his curfew and getting stuck in local traffic.
Basically I was so disturbed by the opening episodes' seemingly needless filicide (in addition to the rape!) that I had a hard time getting past it. I really needed something compelling in the rest of the narrative that would take me away from it, embed it in a world where such violence would make sense, or offer some kind of implicit commentary on the insane wrongness of those acts, anything to put them into perspective. But what follows is instead a convoluted play-by-play in which there is never time for reflection and most characters’ behavior is irrational or inexplicable. Readers have little sense of characters’ inner states and motivations beyond the most basic drive for survival, or “good characters=know how to love and want to save universe”, “bad characters=only know greed and want to destroy universe”. The workings of the KBI-virus-astrophysics interplay are even more inscrutable and seem to be made up as things go along, such that readers have little sense of what is ever actually at stake. Claudio’s less dramatic storyline is actually more compelling than his parents’, but it is also disappointingly familiar… The whole time, I felt like this volume was rushing through events and getting a list of deaths out of the way so our self-sacrificing misfit-loner-orphan-hero/prophesied chosen one could have a dark and compelling backstory before he steps out of the shadows to exact revenge, save the universe, etc. [And why does only Claudio get access to his inherited superpowers? Why doesn't anything get activated in his older sister when she experiences nothing but mortal danger in her brief story arc? Missed opportunity for a badass character there.] Anyway, it leaves me wondering if I should give the next volume a chance, as things might calm down and take a more sensible pace, or if I’m better off left with vague imaginings of an underlying sci-fi epic as I continue listening to my favorite Coheed and Cambria albums?
November 15, 2010
I LOVE COHEED AND CAMBRIA
Read
September 29, 2022Because you're a sculptor doesn't mean you can act.
Because you're a painter doesn't mean you can dance.
Because you're a boxer doesn't mean you can ice skate.
AND: Because you're an awesome rock singer, song writer and guitar player: does NOT MEAN you can write books!
Oh my fu#king God these books that truly genius rock musician Claudio Sanchez has written to accompany the band Coheed and Cambria's concept albums (I just have to assume that that's how he does it, because these books could not possibly inspire anything other than pity and confusion - sorry Claude, but you seem like the type of guy who wants to hear the truth). Are so unbelievably awful, not so bad they're good AT ALL. Just straight up horrible.
Save yourself the dissapointment and stick to the albums. And read Ursula LeGuin along side instead. It won't tie in with the music. But reading these will actually make the albums worse. They're that bad.
Because you're a painter doesn't mean you can dance.
Because you're a boxer doesn't mean you can ice skate.
AND: Because you're an awesome rock singer, song writer and guitar player: does NOT MEAN you can write books!
Oh my fu#king God these books that truly genius rock musician Claudio Sanchez has written to accompany the band Coheed and Cambria's concept albums (I just have to assume that that's how he does it, because these books could not possibly inspire anything other than pity and confusion - sorry Claude, but you seem like the type of guy who wants to hear the truth). Are so unbelievably awful, not so bad they're good AT ALL. Just straight up horrible.
Save yourself the dissapointment and stick to the albums. And read Ursula LeGuin along side instead. It won't tie in with the music. But reading these will actually make the albums worse. They're that bad.
September 27, 2021
I will preface this by saying that graphic novels/comic books and the sci-fi genre in general are not really my thing. I am a huge fan of Coheed and Cambria and I've been wanting to familiarize myself with the story behind the music, so I decided to start at the beginning.
I don't know if this is just because I'm not a sci-fi person, but I found the story to be hard to follow at times. Maybe if I had read The Year of the Black Rainbow beforehand it may have been easier to follow? I don't know. While I lost the story here and there and had to go back and remind myself what was going on, I did find the story to be exciting and I could definitely see it being made into a movie or a tv series. I look forward to reading more.
I don't know if this is just because I'm not a sci-fi person, but I found the story to be hard to follow at times. Maybe if I had read The Year of the Black Rainbow beforehand it may have been easier to follow? I don't know. While I lost the story here and there and had to go back and remind myself what was going on, I did find the story to be exciting and I could definitely see it being made into a movie or a tv series. I look forward to reading more.
February 14, 2020
I loved these albums when they were coming out in the early 00s and was desperate to have the actual story in front of me as I was listening as the songs don't really do a good job providing context for what is happening. Well, here's the context. The world Claudio Sanchez has built is a fascinating one, but the storytelling, writing, and art are plainly amateurish. It's a shame because Sanchez's songwriting is pretty dang good, and this is an excellent example of how someone relatively astute in one medium can't quite hang in another.
May 2, 2022
I'm a massive Coheed fan, but you can really tell these are older comics from someone with not a whole lot of experience. Super disjointed with poor exposition and unnecessary and immature plot points, but overall a solid first entry in the series.
July 12, 2022
Although messy at times, The Second Stage Turbine Blade is a beautifully illustrated and interesting story that employs many favorite sci-fi tropes, but then disrupts and subverts them. I look forward to where the authors take this story.
August 29, 2023
Don't normally do graphic novels but I loved this, it gives so much more background to the album, couldn't believe how dark it was, particularly the beginning and how it relates to the first song on the album
November 9, 2018
Weird, more than a little confusing, and not really in the good way.
I might've liked it more if I was into Coheed & Cambria, but also I might not have because rape, yikes.
I might've liked it more if I was into Coheed & Cambria, but also I might not have because rape, yikes.
November 24, 2018
Sanchez's storytelling is way more effective in music form, but I still think I'll finish all the issues.
May 28, 2019
A disjointed disappointment. So much potential not enough pages. I look forward to the remake of this and hopefully Claudio can tell the story better with a better artist and more of a budget.
August 29, 2019
this is quite possibly the worst comic book I've ever read, and i read a lot of 90s marvel.
January 14, 2022
Fantastic artwork, great story, excited to read the rest. I love listening to the album after reading this to get context for the music
December 28, 2022
Really enjoyed this and all the tie ins, connections, and Easter eggs to the songs and album.
July 3, 2024
the manipulation of coheed ohhhh mr sanchez when i get You
July 17, 2015
First things first. I really do enjoy this band. I like the concept story behind the albums and always enjoyed scouring the internet looking for details to string together.
Unfortunately, I'm not here to tell you that this comic is bad because I now have the story put out there in a readable format and that has taken away from that fun. Nope. Not at all.
First off, readable format? It's about as coherent as a bunch of pieced together song lyrics (go figure). It jumps around so much. I'm hoping they were just trying to tell as much as they could as quickly as possible since they didn't know how long the series would actually stay in print. Hell, Coheed pretty much gets told he has to kill his children and then just does it. There is very little in place that shows he had much of a problem coming to terms with this. I think Claudio needs to stick to song writing. I've read a couple self-published comics with very little talent behind them, printed more for fun or as a hobby, that had better writing than this. This was a mess.
The art is atrocious. Quite easily the worst art I've ever seen in a comic series. It looks like it gets progressively worse too, as if the artist just stopped caring. Seriously.
If for any reason I ever need to clear out my comics or trades, this will be the first in the discard stack.
Finishing up here, I am a rather huge fan of Coheed and Cambria's music. I came into this wanting to absolutely love it. This was a colossal disappointment. Especially when you consider that I very much dislike the band My Chemical Romance, but I would recommend Gerard Way's Umbrella Academy to anybody with eyes.
Unfortunately, I'm not here to tell you that this comic is bad because I now have the story put out there in a readable format and that has taken away from that fun. Nope. Not at all.
First off, readable format? It's about as coherent as a bunch of pieced together song lyrics (go figure). It jumps around so much. I'm hoping they were just trying to tell as much as they could as quickly as possible since they didn't know how long the series would actually stay in print. Hell, Coheed pretty much gets told he has to kill his children and then just does it. There is very little in place that shows he had much of a problem coming to terms with this. I think Claudio needs to stick to song writing. I've read a couple self-published comics with very little talent behind them, printed more for fun or as a hobby, that had better writing than this. This was a mess.
The art is atrocious. Quite easily the worst art I've ever seen in a comic series. It looks like it gets progressively worse too, as if the artist just stopped caring. Seriously.
If for any reason I ever need to clear out my comics or trades, this will be the first in the discard stack.
Finishing up here, I am a rather huge fan of Coheed and Cambria's music. I came into this wanting to absolutely love it. This was a colossal disappointment. Especially when you consider that I very much dislike the band My Chemical Romance, but I would recommend Gerard Way's Umbrella Academy to anybody with eyes.
May 13, 2009
Although I read this serially, I have to say that I was quite impressed with the story-telling ability of Claudio Sanchez. Although I am a huge fan of Coheed & Cambria, I was never certain whether or not the comics would be able to portray the enigmas that are ever present in the lyrics of their songs. The story translates beautifully, however, with wonderful artwork accompanying a compelling storyline. Although sometimes very brutal, the graphic novel explores the origin of the Crowing, and if you are a fan of Coheed & Cambria, you will not want to miss this.
December 22, 2012
I'm not one for Sci-fi necessarily, but I absolutely love the band Coheed & Cambria and their albums focus on The Amory Wars. It was also written by their frontman, Claudio Sanchez. Essentially, It is about the romance between the "anti-terrorists" Coheed Kilgannon and Cambria Kilgannon, which were designed to protect the 79 planets bonded by the keyforce. There's much to this to try to condense, but take my word for it! It's is absolutely amazing and brilliant!
May 24, 2016
Coheed and Cambria are one of my favourite bands. I wanted to love this and have wanted to read it for years, I was so excited to finally immerse myself in the world Claudio has created, I was hoping reading the comics would make the story become more clear to me but I still feel confused! I have more to say but I don't have time to write it all down now so maybe I will come back to this review if I remember....
September 15, 2013
This clarifies some of the backstory behind the Second Stage album. The artwork is clean but a bit simplistic. The background designs and shading are minimal to decent. Good writing but I am still left wanting more world-building, more history of The Keywork. Maybe I'll get that in the In Keeping Secrets Of Silent Earth: 3 collection.
July 12, 2014
Mediocre art with a subpar story to match. The narration is way too overbearing and it's hard not to cringe when you read a lyric from a Coheed and Cambria song as it usually feels very out of place (although I suppose this is a glimpse into what Coheed's lyrics are actually talking about). Honestly if I didn't like the band so damn much I would have probably given it 1 star.
May 20, 2013
Pretty good science fiction going on here. I'm rating it 4 stars because it definitely helps me appreciate the music even more than I already did and vice versa. Recommended if you listen or want to listen to Coheed and Cambria.
January 11, 2014
I read the amory war because I wanted to learn about all things coheed and cambria. I'm glad I read it because now I understand the story behind the music, however I am not going to be a fair critic of the comic itself due to my bias of loving coheeds music.
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