Comic Review: Triage #1

Triage #1

Dark Horse Comics

Writer: Phillip Sevy

Artist: Philip Sevy

Triage is a brand new sci-fi epic, the authorial debut of Philip Sevy who is writing and drawing the book. It’s a book about a woman called uhhh… Wait, lemme check… Ah, there it is! It’s a book about a nurse called Evie Pierce who -after being forced to take a non-payed leave from her job due to a yet unspecified incident – wakes up in a strange world. There, she comes across two different versions of herself: one is a superhero-type character, while the other is a military commander from a post-apocalyptic world. They are instructed by an older woman (another version of Evie, I guess) to follow her for answers, but they are soon attacked by a fully armoured, badass looking terminator.

There are some major, glaring issues with the book, so I’ll start on the positive note – the art is good. It’s not like, THE BEST art, but it’s good. The faces look a bit awkward, sure, but there are some really cool designs. All the versions of Evie have really nice and distinctive designs and the Terminator-type character looks hella cool. Furthermore, the world design is pretty great as well. The superhero one is colourful and the post-apocalyptic world is you’re typical… post-apocalyptic world, but still looks rad. But the ‘hub world’ is definitely the best one, with some trippy scenery. And I always enjoy those, since the artist gets a chance to go wild.

The layering of the book – the page composition and paneling – is also really good. We get nice glimpses of the homeworlds of our protagonists and they all get their moment in the spotlight…

… Unfortunately, the writing itself takes the book quite a few steps back. The book is completely narrated by the OG Evie with a monologue that doesn’t make that much sense. You get the feeling that the author is trying to be really smart about it, but it ends up just falling flat. Don’t get me wrong, there are books that use this type of narration to great effect, with Vaughan’s and Staples’ Saga coming to mind. But here, it just didn’t work. It doesn’t help that the same monologue takes place over all the different segments of the book, but in a way that it’s not obvious, from the get-go, that it’s still the same person talking.

I honestly didn’t understand any of the metaphors Evie was conveying. It ends with some ominous talk about death that doesn’t make all that much sense. its only purpose is to make you think that the book is deeper than it really is.

There are also some missed opportunities. For example, most of the Terminator fight, for some reason, happens of-screen. And sure, epic and cool fights aren’t the meat and potato of every comic, but they can serve as a nice hook and showcase the artist’s capabilities.

As for the characters, I can’t say I was blown away by any of them. They’re all missing that extra something that would make them memorable. The only character that comes close to that is the Superhero version. There’s something about her diva persona that makes her stand out and it will be interesting to see how she’ll get along with the rest of the characters.

This is obviously Sevy’s first foray into writing a comic book and, unfortunately, it kinda falls flat. Despite the books really nice artwork and fine paneling, there are some glaring issues with the writing itself. Hopefully he’ll have a chance to iron out the problems. There’s definitely an interesting story hiding in there somewhere.

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