In GRIMM UNIVERSE PRESENTS QUARTERLY: STEAMPUNK, available from Zenescope Entertainment on April 28th, 2021, Abraham van Helsing and his motley crew breach a portal between dimensions to arrive on our Earth.
The Details
- Written By: Lou Iovino
- Art By: Alessio Mariani, Rodrigo Xavier, Ismael Canales, Allan Otero
- Colors By: Maxflan Araujo, Marco Brakko, Edwin Estrada
- Letters By: Taylor Esposito
- Cover Art By: Igor Vitorino, Ivan Nunes
- Cover Price: $8.99
- Release Date: April 28, 2021
Was It Good?
It was odd in an entertaining sort of way.
The art is house-style Zenescope, which means good, solid, quality art. As you can tell from the Details section, a small army of creators worked on this book and there’s no obvious difference from one page to the next. That’s remarkable.
See for yourself in our GRIMM UNIVERSE PRESENTS QUARTERLY: STEAMPUNK preview.
The story has a lot of action and a high pace. It builds two separate worlds to make the story feel big, and enough time is spent on each character to make them somewhat memorable.
What’s odd is the central conflict. Let’s get into it.
What’s It About?
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
In South Central L.A, a drug deal is about to go down. New players in town are pushing their special drug, called Ether, and demanding the other gangs start selling it… or else their gangs are going to die.
Right away, you sense these are two groups who are not anybody you want to be associate with. When the “negotiation” fails, the shooting starts. The Ether gang comes out on top but not before their drug vile gets smashed. They demand payment for what was destroyed, and the Ether gang leaves to await payment.
Here’s the kicker. The Ether gang is led by Abraham van Helsing and his steampunk crew. In short, this van Helsing is not a nice person. He’s a lethal drug dealer.
The L.A. gang leader, Ash, shows up to tend to the survivors. When he finds out the name of who killed most of his men, he kills his surviving lieutenant and goes off to find out how to get the Ether formula.
Flashback a few years to van Helsing’s steampunk world. He and his crew are on the run from the police in a sailing ship. They manage to evade long enough to head down a narrow crevice in an uncharted island where they encounter a portal in a cave. The ship is pulled through into our world and dumped on an island. Fortunately for van Helsing, his steampunk world is largely powered by Ether which is made from silica aka the core component of sand, and this Earth has more than he’ll ever need.
Back in his own drug lab, Ash gets his chemical workers to analyze the effects of Ether and they figure out it’s the ultimate drug because it not only gets the user high, but it stops all other drugs from working. However, there’s no possible way for Ash’s scientists to figure out how Ether is made, so he makes a plan to steal the formula from van Helsing.
Through a series of more flashbacks, we get a montage of fairly full character moments where we see how van Helsing acquired each member of his crew, including how they get their steampunk appendages. The montages are quick, but not so quick that you don’t get the gist of each character and their personality.
One of Ash’s minions breaks into van Helsing’s drug lab and steals Calder, their steampunk android drug scientist. In Ash’s lab, they attempt to hack and disassemble Calder to get the secret for manufacturing Ether, but it resists them at every turn.
Van Helsing launches a mission to retrieve Calder. His steampunk crew overruns Ash’s facility, and a massive battle ensues for the right to own Ether and be the top drug lord of L.A.
How Does It End?
Ash is as much bite as bark (*hint*). Ezzie is a world-class witch. Liezel van Helsing is about to get some unexpected company.
Final Thoughts
GRIMM UNIVERSE PRESENTS QUARTERLY: STEAMPUNK, available from Zenescope Entertainment on April 28th, 2021, has great art that captures the uniqueness of steampunk quite well, and it has a great pace for a 70-page quarterly. It’s simply tough to get behind the main character who aspires to be the dominating drug lord of the world, so your mileage may vary. Still, the score will be higher based on the quality of the book, not on whether or not we agree with the story choices.
Score: 8.5/10
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