Vortex 2.0 Issue #5 – Comic Book Spotlight

Hey, folks! Jim here. You may remember me from such comic book reviews as Detective Pikachu and Storm Kings Hyperbreed. I’m here to review Vortex 2.0 for you. Hopefully I can live up to the fantastic quality precedent set by Megan Herbold in her reviews of Issues one, two, three, and four!

Please, if you’re just hearing about this comic for the first time, I urge you to check out her reviews so we’re all on the same, figurative and literal, page! Or better yet, pick up your own copies right
Here, as they’re all out and available.

Basic Synopsis

When last we left our heroes, they had hijacked and crashed a jump-capable helicopter on the abandoned and quarantined holiday destination planet, Menemsha Bite. This place was the first-ever planet to be terraformed and turned into a second Earth – nature made better by humans, for humans!

Obviously, it was too good to be true, right? We come to find that on the poles, at least, this paradise has its fair share of military tech with a huge abandoned complex just brimming with grisly secrets.

Back on the Cag, we have Brass releasing Munro to do a quick check-up on our ragtag batch of fugitives. She’s ordered to check out Menemsha Bite and the helicopter crash site. See if anyone managed to survive. Hopefully not, we can put all this behind us and no-one ever needs to be bothered by Dixon, Dusty, Ana, and their entourage ever again.

Meanwhile, the aforementioned fugitives are searching through the complex. They find the bearded Dole. We’ve met him before. He’s the guy who was brought here with the biggest, baddest Kilp inside him. It was successfully removed and implanted into a dead surfer because apparently in space no-one can hear your strongly-worded ethical concerns. They also find out that the Kilp has a strong sense of aesthetics in their architecture. I won’t spoil what that results in, but it’s shocking.

We also check back in with that nice, young lady Doctor from the aftermath of Dr. Masud’s passing. The one from the church. We step into her office for a cup of tea and a chat. Something to help us wind down after all the crazy body horror.

My Take

First of all, the art is so consistently good in this comic. From the gory details to the characterization of each of the players, everything is beautifully drawn and visually impactful. You wince and smile in all the right places.

The story is interesting. There’s a lot of cool elements that make this tale pretty compelling, with likable characters on all sides. Of course, the aliens themselves are menacing in all the right ways. They remind me of the critter from LIFE, Venom of Spider-Man fame, and even somewhat of the Xenomorphs from the Aliens franchise. Throw in a little bit of The Thing (The horror movie Thing. Not Ben Grimm.) and some Invasion of the Body Snatchers and you have a general idea of the genuine fear these things can inspire. Now, take that mish-mosh of scary crap and inject it into your arm. Yikes, right?

In short, this comic has been out for a little while but if you were at all thinking about picking it up and were maybe on the fence somewhat? I can heartily recommend you do yourself a favor and grab a copy. The folks over at Storm King are absolutely killing it with this series.

Facebook Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.