Customer Reviews

Reload/Mek

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Originally released as a three part miniseries, done in a flipbook style (which Ellis also did with Tokyo Storm Warning / Red) the two short stories Reload and Mek show a simplified version of what makes Warren Ellis' stories great.

The story of Reload begins with the assassination of the President of the United States and continues to get more intense. The assassin is incredibly well trained, and someone in the government seems to be covering for her. (And it's not the reason you think.) One secret service agent is stuck between stopping the assassin, who continues to attack government agencies, and the government he's trying to save.

Despite the short length of the story, Ellis manages to drop clues as to where he's going, and gives enough characterization that you care about the people involved.

Mek is a story about people augmenting their bodies with mechancial enhancements. Some Mek is used only for physical enhancements, on the level of tattoos or piercings, and some Mek is used for augmentation, such as enhanced eye-sight, or having a cell phone in your head. But then there's Bad Mek, military enhancements like guns, which are being obtained illegally and the results are violent wars between gangs and organized crime.

Enter Sarissa Leon, who helped start the Mek movement as a way of enhancing culture. She moved to Washinton D.C. to continue to lobby for the rights of Mek users, but the violent death of her ex-boyfriend has brought her back into a subculture which barely recognizes her.

The story is obviously intended, at least partly, to be a metaphor for the drug culture. What started as something that artists and hippies used to expand their minds has become a source of violent crime, drug abuse, and death.

Again the characterization is excellent, and despite the short space, Ellis manages to create a decent mystery.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the art work. On Reload Paul Gulacy and Jimmy Palmiotti illustrate thrilling action sequences. I can hear the gunfire and the explosions even though no onomatopoeia appears on the page. On Mek Steve Rolston and Al Gordon capture a wonderful techno-punk look for the characters, sort of goth cyborgs. And the cityscapes, while simple, are excellent, with varied sizes and shapes to the buildings, something sorely lacking in most comic book artists' repotoires.

This book shows all of Warren Ellis' strengths. His ability tell a good story, his characterization, his counter-culture ideals.

I read this book in one sitting, but I'm definately going to go back and read it again.

Let me start out by saying that I've only read the MEK title of this compilation so this review is not based on Reload... However i have read some of Ellis's other short story works and they all seem to wallow in the same pit.

I am not going to go into the story details as the previous reviews cover this well enough. Mek is derivative, unoriginal, uninspired and full of instances of poorly executed and unneeded violence that does more to take away from the story then to enhance it. The cyber world Ellis creates is one of countless others seen in countless other books movies and comics. The protagonist is boring and has virtually no likable qualities. The dialogue is cookie cutter at best, and the plot reads like something out of a choose your own adventure book. The book tries to be a political metaphor, a mystery, a revenge story, and a cautionary tale all at once but succeeds only being juvenile.

Just avoid this... There are literally thousands of better stories then this

I found the Reload section of this book pretty standard stuff, and the artwork was uninspired.

MEK on the otherhand, was an imaginative, thought-provoking, and very creatively drawn (and colored) little story that was thoroughly enjoyable...well worth the low price you can get this for used.

Both stories reminded me of early William Gibson, which, in my book, is a good thing.

Reload is basically a spy/thriller type of story. Cue one assassination and one dead president. The story works back from there as to why it happens, and who did it.

A man tasked to find the killer has to decided whether or not the assassin is in the right, given what he finds out, and the various politics motivations of the different parties in the book.

Mek is a cyberpunk story, at its heart. Mek is short for mechanical augmentation, and when the founder/inventor of this sort of technology and society gets back involved much later, she finds it greatly different.