Metal Society #4 // Review
Rosa wants to call off the match. The robot she’s up against wants to know why. Maybe they can find some common ground. Maybe they can’t. Maybe it won’t change the fact that they’re going to be fighting. Maybe it won’t change the outcome. Time will tell as Metal Society enters its fourth issue. Writer Zack Kaplan continues to inch the plot along towards the big showdown between muscle and machine with the aid of artist Guilherme Balbi and colorist Marco Lesko. The sprawling epic feel that Kaplan seems to be going for isn’t quite harnessed by the art, which isn’t given enough room to feel big enough.
Somewhere in the now, the match between Rosa and the robot is starting. Somewhere in the past, things started getting ugly. As the match loomed closer, humans and robots started attacking each other. Somewhere in the midst of it all, Rosa approaches her opponent, and they have a conversation. That conversation finds the two of them reaching a mutual respect for each other that may or may not be enough to halt a full-blown civil war between humans and androids. Tensions increase as the match grows closer. No one is going to come through the turmoil without conflict.
Kaplan keeps moving the narrative back and forth from the looming reality of the match and the events which led up to it. It’s a tricky structure to maintain episodically as any potential of the fight getting averted keeps getting undermined by the very real presence of the fight drawing nearer. The conflict between robots and humans has always been a bit of a muddle. Really this is a story of aboriginal peoples fighting against the newer invasive culture. There really isn’t a significant difference between the two of them aside from the fact that one of them is organic and the other isn’t. It weakens the potential of the story to have little difference between humanity and the machines it has created that have replaced it.
There are big riots in this issue. Big conflicts. Kaplan isn’t giving Balbi enough room to bring the full reality of a riot across on the page. There are some beautifully-framed crowd shots, but they aren’t enough to give proper scope to the size of the central conflict and what it is that’s really at stake in what feels like it SHOULD be a massive culture-wide conflict. It may be difficult to place the exact scope of the larger conflict, but Balbi and colorist Lesko do a really good job of delivering the tension between Rosa and her android opponent as the match between them draws near.
Kaplan’s story has some real potential, but the basic elements of the script seem to keep circulating around the same elements that they have been over the course of the first three issues of the series. The direct conversation between Rosa and the android really SHOULD be more of a revelation than it comes across at the issue’s end. There’s a great deal of potential here, but Metal Society isn’t quite bringing it across.
