Comic Review: Savage Empire

Writer: Timothy Lewinson
Illustration: Jim Roy Jimenez
Letterer: Bernardo Brice
Purchase: Amazon

Savage Empire takes place in California after it has been turned into a wasteland. After a catastrophic event, the state broke away from the continent Civilians now compete in groups to capture military aid as well as survive dinosaurs. That's right, dinosaurs are now back and looking for revenge, or at least a meal.

Savage Empire is a little different from your standard post apocalyptic styled fiction. Mainly because it doesn't happen to some society that is either far more advanced or far less. Instead it takes place in modern times. Despite the roaming EMPs that seem to follow the dinosaurs, everything still works fine if it's running on batteries. There's also a secret underground facility operated by off the grid government scientist.

The main story revolves around Reeves. A commando as tough as they come. He's placed with a group of soldiers tasked with retrieving a package. The group stops to rescue some civilians and splits so that some stay behind and protect them. Reeves is injured while retrieving the pack, which turns out to be a scientist who had been working on time travel. They experiment on [redacted] to save his life but expect to turn him into a science fair project now. He breaks out of the lab, learning of his new powers along the way and seeking revenge.

I wish a few of the characters had a little more personality. I know Sonya because of her role, and the fact that she's a certified bad ass. There's other named characters, even some team members I forget because there's not much to them. The important characters are well written to show their emotions, thought process and goals. The problem is there's a few side characters that get a lot of time, who are just boring.

The art in Savage Empire perfectly fits the tone of the story. It doesn't attempt to do anything glamorous and beyond what is necessary for the story. Some people would be tempted to paint a beautiful tropic wasteland. The problem with that would be that it's modern California and it would not turn into that over night. The color pallet has lots of dark earth tones. For some reason it gives me a throwback feel. Sort of like reading old comics as a kid.

There's plenty of lines but there's an almost purposeful lack of heavy bold lines that a lot of comics currently feature. It just feels less restricted as you read it. The panels also seem to be chosen at random, which is good. This is very much a story where anything can and will happen, there's no path you can predict this taking so it's good that every page doesn't feature the same panel layout. Panels in warped shapes, popping out of others, it's all great and helps match the fast pace of the story.

Overall I think Savage Empire is a wild ride and I'm interested to see what comes next. There's more in Reeves' journey and I want to know how it continues. There's also the fact that he's a wanted man now and has made enemies of some really powerful people. It's certainly a project that I want to keep my eyes on in the future. There's a ton of unanswered questions about what Reeves' goal is now. He's being hunted by the government and is now as much dinosaur as man. There's a lot to find out.