The Protista Chronicles #1
J.W. Pretorius
Reviewed by Darren Hick

A little while back, Eric Evans displayed on the TCJ Message Board his dismay at the lack of science fiction stories currently produced in comic-book form. J.W. Pretorius' Protista Chronicles, at least, makes it clear that the genre is not altogether dead.

The Protista Chronicles is one half of a flip comic shared with Philip Cybin's Five Speed Manual. This review will cover only the former.

I couldn't tell you how many copies of this book we've received at the Journal offices in the past couple months. For the record, that's not a way to endear yourself to a reviewer. On the other hand, each time it showed up, it came with plenty of stickers, which balances things out nicely.

Now, if only the book itself were balanced as well. As it is with many up-and-comers in the comics medium, Pretorius' book concentrates its efforts on one side of the art/writing balance necessary for truly exceptional comics work. In this case, the art of The Protista Chronicles far outweighs its writing. Let's get the bad out of the way first:

TPC embodies the worst of science fiction's seemingly inherent leanings: a weak story built on an improbable premise. Although I'm not as well versed in SF as I am in some other genres, I've seen writers make the best and worst of this apparent inbred quality. Pretorius falls somewhere in the middle. Here's the setup: In his dying breaths, Joseph Stalin orders the creation of the largest robot army the world's ever seen, "from chess comeradbots to proto-microbiologobots," with the end result being the creation of a Soviet base on the moon (Pretorius breaks this issue up into two parts, incidentally, reversing their chronological order to no apparent end).

As a set-up, its not so terrible. Not great, but an inspired writer could probably do terrific things with it. In case you haven't read the rhetoric I wrote into the preceding sentence, Pretorius is not this inspired writer. The characterization, when he uses any, is weak and one-dimensional. I suppose that might be inevitable when you're writing motivation for walking appliances, but then one's led to wonder why Pretorius would undertake such a futile task in the first place. Yeah, it works for the more hackneyed of horror writers (a la the Blob, the Heap, and hey, even the Man-Thing), but it's a wrong-minded premise to begin with when applied to one of your story's lead characters. It's tough to feel any sort of connection to a character who has one motivation in life, and whose life will be complete after overcoming one, single obstacle. Eventually, this lead appliance (Tchek) meets up with a woman scouring and scavaging moon-junk. And that's all she does. It's all like some unfortunate version of the Winsor-Smith Machine Man revamp from the '80s (which wasn't all that terrific to begin with). The story hasn't concluded, so maybe that much will improve, but it doesn't bode well.

Aside:

Pretorius' story contains plenty of those little bits of eye-candy which flavor a story for a reader who is already widely read. But I have to ask: What is it with Powerman? He showed up in one Golden Age Batman/Superman story, which was reprinted in the Greatest Batman Stories collection, and has since started showing up all over the industry. First in Kingdom Come, but now in The Protista Chronicles? I don't get it. Shouldn't there be some restriction on obscure intertextual references to Golden Age superhero stories?

The drafting, on the other hand, is strong. Pretorius knows the black-and-white medium, and uses its advantages to good effect. He uses contrast of lights and darks to effectively break up foreground and background, and employs cross-hatching and etching as a strong (if subtle) texturing tool. He further varies perspective and distance enough to keep the story moving along. Frankly, it's all very professional, and all very impressive.

Unfortunately, it's also missing that something extra that would make the art exceptional. Perhaps it's that, as the majority of the characters are masked, or robots, there's very little chance for facial expression -- and Pretorius doesn't pick up the slack with bodily expression. As a result, the art is finely crafted, but notably sterile. Perhaps it's that the comic is so clearly influenced by filmic storyboarding, and would imaginably work better in motion than in sequence.

In the end, The Protista Chronicles is passable. And, although I'm usually loathe to suggest such things, Pretorious is one of those artists, I imagine, who would be vastly improved by someone else writing his work. Perhaps an inspired writer could infuse some life into Pretorius' skilled but sterile art. It certainly seems the case.

The Protista Chronicles #1 is available for $3.00 postage-paid from Xulu Comics, P.O. Box 50053, Indianapolis, IN 46250.