Steam Patriots #1

Steam Patriots #1

Silverline Comics 2021

Created by Scott Wakefield & Rory Boyle

Written by Scott Wakefield

Illustrated by David Mims

Coloured & Lettered by Dan Hosek

Steam Patriots is the story of Felix Ward, a young colonial Mechanician’s Apprentice with an unmatched memory for details set in the American Revolution. As British troops storm ashore, Felix discovers information that could change the balance of power in America’s war for independence. The entire world changed when Ben Franklin refined the steam engine and ushered in a technological revolution. Now Felix’s world is thrown upside down as he’s swept into war and must evade the British juggernaut to help the cause for freedom.

One of the aspects of what I do that I really enjoy is that folks send me books to review that wouldn’t normally be on my radar. I’d never heard of Silverline Comics so that this was sent to me cause me a nice deal of excitement and then the premise of it was something else that I hadn’t seen before so I was excited for this as well. This engaged my mind right from the get-go and that’s something which it should do as it made me think of da Vinci and his futuristic designs during his lifetime and what would’ve happened had steam engines actually become something real.

I am really enjoying the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. The character development is sensational and between the dialogue, the character interaction alongside how they act and react to the situations and circumstances they encounter continue to flesh these characters out is extremely impressive. The pacing here is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the story, the characters and this world is the perfect blend of history and fiction.

I rather like the way we see this being structured and how we see the layers within the story emerge and continue from off-screen is well achieved. That these layers are where we see the bulk of the story begin to take shape and where it deviates from history is where the depth and complexity of the storytelling really grab hold of the reader. The way that we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is so incredibly nice to see.

The interiors here are interesting to see. The linework takes on this sketchy quality to it which interprets the clothing rather nicely. There are times that the faces and body proportions are a tad out of sync with what we think of people looking like it’s okay because the facial expressions and body language work wonders in furthering the characterisation. We do see backgrounds being utilised fairly well and they do a great job of working within the composition of the panels to bring us depth perception, a sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the book. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a solid eye for storytelling. The colour work is also well done. The way we see various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is great to see.

I love seeing history’s heroes being brought to life here and while we’ve yet to see a lot of steampunk style work I am looking forward to when it makes itself more prevalently known. Also that our hero here is Felix Ward who happens to be a young man is someone everyone can relate to. He’s who we’ve all wanted to be at some point in time, the kid who saves the world as we know it from the forces of tyranny, I mean who hasn’t had that dream? Show me a comics fan and if they say they haven’t then they fibbing. This is going to be a fun, exciting story and I look forward to seeing how it continues to unfold.

​

This only has a few days left on Kickstarter, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rolandmann/d2sp1/, so if you miss it there you can head over to Silverline Comics and find it there, along with the line of books they put out. https://silverlinecomics.com/