Tech Jacket Vol. 1: The Boy from Earth
Before hitting puberty, every boy’s greatest fantasy is to fly (whereas starting with puberty, every boy’s greatest fantasy involves his fly). Robert Kirkman bottles this wish, shakes it up until it’s carbonated, and then releases it in the fun, fizzy graphic novel TECH JACKET VOL. 1: THE BOY FROM EARTH.
In 2002, prior to hitting it big with INVINCIBLE, Kirkman’s first creator-owned title with Image Comics was TECH JACKET. It lasted all of six issues. In the introduction to this collected edition, the writer admits he let it die before its time, but perhaps it can be resurrected in the future. Let’s hope this is the case, because this is great stuff.
Zack Thompson is your normal, everyday American school kid, until the day he happens upon a fallen alien who’s crash-landed to Earth. Part of the Geldarian race o’ space, the being is equipped with a way-cool, high-tech automatic suit of armor – a TECH JACKET, if you will. Rather than let it fall into enemy hands, the Geldarian transfers it to Zack’s body without asking.
For a while, it’s pretty damn cool. After all, he can fly, he has super-strength and he can beat up the mob goons who are pestering his dad, whose floundering hardware store is mired deeply in debt. But then the Geldarians, seeking the missing suit, find him and take him back to their intergalactic home so he can help them fight their war against the evil Kresh.
The book then becomes a sci-fi training sequence, followed by the promised battle. You can guess the outcome, of course, but Zack’s real problems don’t begin until he returns home. After all, a lot can happen when you’re gone unannounced for six months.
Kirkman does an admirable job capturing the innocence of youth and tackling the wish-fulfillment angle without making it seem childish and cheesy. Even this early in his career, his knack for humorous writing is evident, as is his sense for high-flying adventure.
E.J. Su provides the art for the complete run, and it works well with Kirkman’s scripts, in that the guy can draw big, and handles action with aplomb. All the character’s faces have a slight Asian look to them, however, even though they’re lily-white, sometimes giving the material a whiff of being manga.
That’s my only criticism of TECH JACKET, other than it was gone before its time, of course. –Rod Lott
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE IRREDEEMABLE ANT-MAN VOL. 1: LOW-LIFE by Robert Kirkman
• THE IRREDEEMABLE ANT-MAN VOL. 2: SMALL-MINDED by Robert Kirkman
• MARVEL ZOMBIES by Robert Kirkman and Sean Phillips
[...] LOW-LIFE by Robert Kirkman • THE IRREDEEMABLE ANT-MAN VOL. 2: SMALL-MINDED by Robert Kirkman • TECH JACKET VOL. 1: THE BOY FROM EARTH by Robert Kirkman and E.J. [...]
It was a good book, light and adventurous, that took me back to being a kid. There was one glaring flaw, though.
The kid knowingly stays on the alien planet for months without once (ONCE!!!) even thinking about contacting his parents. When he gets home, he’s astonished that everything has changed in his absence. It was a level of neglect from an otherwise clear-headed character that made a huge chunk of the story lose credibility for me.
Granted, that strained bit of plotting was probably due to this being an early, unpolished piece of writing from the now fantastic Kirkman.