Review: Junkyard Angels #1

Junkyard Angels is a very weird and disturbing series that reminded me of some good anime and manga such as Akira or Parasyte.
Writer P.K. Eiselt and artist Zachary Enea have created a story that’s both creepy and gripping, with characters trapped in a techno-nightmare filled with babies growing mechanical spider-legs and loving couples tongue-kiss…with multiplying tongues full of plastic cables.

Jason and Bobby

This first issue¹ begins with Jason and Bobby, two boys in love, innocent and happy. Jason has a prosthetic left arm, but that doesn’t faze their friends or families any more than the fact that the boys tenderly kiss each other right out in the open. This cute ambiance changes radically when Bobby, seemingly worried by something, blows out his brain during a family dinner. And his open head reveals something robotic instead of gray matter. Weirded out yet?

Bobby's parents go wild

Jason and Bobby’s young sister Janey spend the rest of the issue discovering the extent of the threat, with people around them turning into something out of John Carpenter’s The Thing, but with a mechanical bent. This is far, far larger than just one boy killing himself (or did he really?, one character hints as much).

Though Zachary Enea’s open and clean style is clearly still evolving, he’s good at drawing both quiet moments and big, mechanical monsters. I especially liked the first sequence, with the lively interaction between Bobby, Jason and their friends, as well as the successive revelations of normal people becoming something quite else, all done in a manner which shows that Enea knows how to use storytelling effectively.
There’s also a back-up story drawn by Juan Fleites (who did the cover of the comic), drawn in a grittier style than Enea’s, which expands on what is happening elsewhere ands shows that whatever is responsible for this technological horror, it is spreading fast. It’s a good counterpoint to the more personal story of Jason and Bobby.

I certainly enjoyed reading this first issue of Junkyard Angels, and I hope the authors will get to finish this story, because I think there’s a lot of potential in what we’ve seen so far.