The steampunk genre has a large window of opportunity to be insanely creative. Sadly, most of the stuff out there gets squandered into mediocrity. “Midnight Society: The Black Lake†by Drew Edward Johnson is the latest victim of this.
Matilda Finn is a secret agent for a secret society in a steampunk style England. She is sent on an assignment at Loch Ness to find a world famous adventurer and his crew who have gone missing.
The story itself isn’t that interesting. It’s a missing person’s case that sounds interesting (a famous explorer gone missing at Loch Ness) but it’s handled as just another missing person’s case you’d hear on the news. Even the opening scene had potential with the four-armed creature, but that went nowhere fast. The creature came off as nothing more than a four armed Gollum.
The world itself has some nice ideas, but they all eventually fall into just another steampunk world. The technology and design is present, but so far it just comes off as somebody using a wrist watch. This may only be the first issue, but the steampunk technology is something people would love to see. Here it just seems so ordinary.
The art at first looks impressive, but as the comic goes on it loses its splendor. At first the art makes a huge impact on the reader by showing off some impressive character and technology designs. Somehow, the art becomes generic and uninteresting. This may be a side effect of the story bleeding into the art. The mediocrity of the story somehow does this trick where the brain makes the reader think great art is boring.
“Midnight Society: The Black Lake†takes a genre that is about as imaginative as they come and makes it a snooze-fest. Boring story, boring art, just plain boring. So much needs to be done to kickstart this story back to life, but for now it’s like swallowing a large dose of Ambien.
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