Review – BOY-1 #2 (IDW Publishing)

September 8, 2015

2 minutes

Publisher: IDW Publishing
Writer: HS Tak
Artist: Amancay Nahuelpan
Release Date: 9th Sept, 2015

After a fairly flat opening issue, the second instalment of IDW’s BOY-1 does see a slight improvement, but ultimately succumbs to the same pitfalls which plagued the opener. There’s no getting away from the fact that the story itself is fairly derivative and clumsily told, a mish-mash of cloning tropes and shady corporate conspiracies, and features a truly unlikeable main protagonist in Jadas.

Normally, the trend with the drug-addicted misogynistic slacker character is that we get to see him gradually evolving into something better, growing as a person as the story progresses. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case with Jadas, who remains every bit as irritating and entitled in this second issue as he did in the first. Worryingly, with this issue serving as the halfway point in the four-issue series, it’s unlikely that any real change will have time to occur, and the lack of investment in the lead character really hamstrings this series from the get-go.

It’s not all bad, however, as Nahuelpan’s artwork sees a significant uptick here, particularly during the brief-but-frantic flurry of action near the start of the issue. There’s still an occasional lack of consistency with the faces of his characters, but his work seems a lot more polished overall here, creating a pleasing distraction from the predictable story and flat characterisation.

While there’s quite possibly the beating heart of a solid idea trapped in here somewhere, the lacklustre execution unfortunately leaves BOY-1 as an instantly forgettable slice of ultimately pedestrian sci-fi. Nowadays in particular, with so many brilliantly inventive, beautifully characterised science fiction titles hitting the shelves on a weekly basis, that’s just not going to cut it.

Rating: 1/5.

The writer of this piece was: Craig Neilson-Adams (aka Ceej)
Article Archive: Ceej Says
You can follow Ceej on Twitter

Amancay Nahuelpan, BOY-1, Craig Neilson, HS Tak, IDW Publishing, Review

4 responses to “Review – BOY-1 #2 (IDW Publishing)”

hugomarink

September 10, 2015 at 6:56 am

While I think your critique is quite valid and well-explained, I think you are being a bit hard on this one. Yeah, it’s not great comics, but it’s readable, easy enough to follow, and mildly interesting thus far. And I do think there are some out there who might enjoy this series. Hell, the owner of my LCS recommended it to me, so there’s one. Just know it reads more like young adult Sci-Fi written by a second year screenwriting student than anything high-concept by a polished writer. It will be interesting to see if the creators can wrap it up to a satisfying conclusion. It’s so hard to really judge these works until we get to the end. And I say there are worse comics out there. I’d give it a 2.2 out of 5. Can’t quit give it that 2.5! :-)

Reply
1. Big Comic Page Editorial Team.
  
  September 12, 2015 at 9:18 am
  
  That’s a fair comment actually. I just found it to be truly flat and forgettable, and given the incredibly high standard of sci-fi comics at the moment lately, I really struggled to find much positive to say about it, sadly.
  
  Reply
  1. hugomarink
    
    September 12, 2015 at 6:06 pm
    
    Yeah, I really don’t disagree with your review at all, just the number score. Boy-1 is pretty tepid stuff and unless they up their game and the next two issues are great, it will be yet another largely forgettable mini-series. I guess I just found a bit more merit to it than you did, but not by much. Sadly, I highly doubt I’ll stick around to see how they wrap it up. Even though I didn’t hate it, it’s not good enough for me to buy the rest of the issues. There are too many really good comics out there.
transhaan

September 8, 2015 at 11:47 pm

Wow ! Awesome review. Your writing is pretty smooth and really concise. I love it. This piece clearly let me know that there are better comics to check out than to follow Boy 1. Keep up the awesome reviews man.

Lashaan

Reply