Titanium Rain Volume 1 HC

Titanium Rain #1

by Josh Finney, Kat Rocha

To be alive is to be at odds with the world. Man against nature. Man against man. The instinct to survive is what has made us who we are. In the year 2031, mankind's survival instinct is put to the test when a civil war in China spirals into global conflict. Nations are destroyed. Millions are killed. And for many, like US Air Force pilot Alec Killian, survival will mean shedding some of his humanity in exchange for biotech and machine. Collects the first four chapters of the Titanium Rain series.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Science Fiction, Comics, Fiction, War, Military Fiction, Audiobook

112 pages, Hardcover

First published April 21, 2010

Reviews

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Talk about a polarizing effort... I either loved or loathed so many aspects of this book with very little material in the middle ground. First, the good...

--The art is in the quasi-photo-realistic style, which at times yields some truly great scenes. The ground military scenes, in particular, are quite well illustrated and compelling.
--The new future state that is described and laid out is a very interesting take on the future of China and the rest of the first world. I was, frankly, more interested in the various descriptions of the geo-political future history than I was the actual lead story.
--The main character, albeit a naval-gazing, reluctant, emo hero, has some interesting moments throughout.

Now for the bad...

--The art sometimes comes off as really weird looking. There are moments when proportions are wrong (such as places where a person's arm only came down to their waist... human arms are much longer than that) or where the angle taken was just... weird.
--The main story is hardly a story. Since there is so much world building sections tossed in throughout the main arc, usually with no natural reason why they were there, the arc is pretty standard and brief: get to know some pilots, go on one mission, talk with pilots in aftermath, the end.
--This story was obviously set up to be continued in future arcs, but I'm not sure if we'll ever see them, so it might not be worth the time you'd put into this since you don't get very much in the way of payoff.

The foundation for a great future world is laid quite well in Titanium Rain, but it isn't very well utilized in this volume and doesn't look like we'll be getting any further visits in the near future, which is unfortunate. So unless you're interested in future history or world building, I can't really recommend this because everything else is pretty uninteresting.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is worth a read for the art alone. Of course, the premise is pretty cool too, which never hurts.

[Bon Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

What did I just do? Read a book? No. Read a comic? No. Listened to a book? No!

I listened - a comic! What a strange, highly functional genre hybrid it is. This was my first venture into this wonderful world of audio comics, something I would have bet my grandma's gobelin that it couldn't work. Because, you don't see the art, which is primary feature of a comic?

Well I guess I'd lost the gobelin. Sorry grandma.

The visual art is replaced with auditory one. And what an art. The production is insane. The immersion almost instant. I could listen the laughter of that Happy woman all day long, and night into the Sunday. It's really a movie in your head.

And theme is perfect for audiocomic. Explosions, jets roaring, missile warning sounds... Just perfect.

Four stars only because it's short. But in the world of short productions, this is a five star material.

I apologize to the comic artists of the comics I'll read in the future, because it seems I'll be actually listening to them more and more.

It might be interesting to check the physical form of the book after listening to see how correct I was in my imaginings :)

[Danny · Rating 1 out of 5]

I like fighter jets, I like sci-if, I like good art and I like comic books. This book had all of those components but unfortunately it had no story. It had some concepts on which a story could have been built but it was so boring.

[BrokenMnemonic · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a mixed bag, and I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it. From the world-building perspective, it's rich and fascinating, set in a near future where China has dissolved into a civil war, driven by a populist uprising led by appealing to the rural and unskilled elements of the population against the more liberal, urban population, where the bulk of the Chinese military has sided with the revolution and other nations have been pulled in to support the remnants of the former PRC regime. Told from the perspective of a small crew of pilots subject to a certain amount of cybernetic enhancement via nanotechnology to turn them into fighter pilots - nanotechnology pumps in their lungs to help them breathe during high-gee manoeuvres, electronics to link their eyes to the onboard computer systems, and so on - the novel features a lot of near-future technology, like armoured suits for infantry, integrated use of combat drones, anti-satellite weapons and so on. There's clearly been a ferocious amount of effort that's gone into fleshing out the background and the technology, and some of the world detail that's hinted out but not expanded (like a free and independent Tibet) is in there, calling for more elaboration. A large chunk of this graphic novel is background detail from Janes Defense-style articles on military technology, propoganda posters, advertising literature from companies tinkering with genetic modification, and so on. There's also a lot of background information provided through the air crew involved in the narrative. That's all really entertaining.

Unfortunately, the story is only four issues long, and feels like an introduction - it basically covers a low-level combat operation and the immediate aftermath, with elements of the training and setup told through flashbacks. When I realised that, I was left with a definite "wait, that's it?" feeling, which was a bit disappointing. The art varies from the superb - at times it almost resembles photograph art, and at others it's beautifully painted - to a few odd anatomical errors that detracted somewhat.

On the one hand, I'd now like to read the next volume, but on the other hand, I'm worried that I might not actually see much more of the world that's being set up by this worldbuilding, and it'd be a great shame because the worldbuilding deserves to be the source of a lot of stories. In some ways it feels unfortunate that it's a story about China being told from the point of view of a bunch of Westerners, as it feels like I'm losing a lot of interesting perspective because of that limitation, and it left me also wanting to see events from the viewpoint of the various Chinese/Tibetan factions.

[Zare · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was something of a mixed bag - art is great, additional goodies like excerpts from newspapers, web pages and online magazines, interview clips etc is all very very well done. But ....
Comics and novels are based on stories and this is a lacking part. There are plenty of elements in the book to keep you interested but they read like world builder book for Battle-tech universe, everything is there but it is up to you to come up with the story and this is something I did not expect from the comic/graphical novel.

Therefore on art and technical side this is pure 5 stars but due to the lack of story it's 3.5 for me (which means 3 in GR rating :) )

I just saw there is volume 2 - I hope story will move on in that volume.

I recommend this to all SF fans - you'll enjoy it :)