Jake Smith, a creator based out of Kansas City Missouri, is known for previous Dark Horse titles Blood Force Trauma and Into Radness. His most recent work was IDW’s Godzilla: War For Humanity. He studied sequential art at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).
RoboWolf #1 (of 4) is Smith’s first solo comics work. We have four main characters in a heist crew: RoboWolf, cyborg wolf; Zuki, diminutive Asian assassin; VCR, African-American computer hacker; and, Lance, British lout of the floating skull variety. The plot is fairly simple, right out of an 80s action movie or video game. One of the crew’s children is kidnapped by their archenemy and they need to steal $1 million dollars for the ransom. Smith uses this as a setup for an epic battle across the dilapidated futuristic city of Sunset Hills, as various other villains are introduced (and may or not be dispatched with extreme prejudice) along the way.
Being Jake Smith’s solo creation is a bit of a rare thing in mainstream comics, yet you can tell from first glance this is a singular artist’s vision from concept to colors. One thing particularly noticeable is the sheer density of Smith’s panels! Wow, there’s just so much going on panel to panel. Smith doesn’t skimp on any detail, be it facial expressions, fashion, vehicles, or even buildings in the background. Everything is treated like a character in the story. Not in an anthropomorphic sense, but rather Smith marshaling every inch of space to sell his zany vision.
What a wonderful retro world Jake Smith creates in RoboWolf. The coloring is so vibrant throughout, yet it’s not gaudy or overdone to the point of distraction. It’s almost manipulated to furthering the narrative, as on the second page where VCR (in a highly agitated state) is surrounded by orange and yellow, in contrast cool Zuki in the next panel has blue and green in the background. These subtle touches amongst the testosterone and dayglo make all the difference in drawing the reader into Smith’s world rather than hammering them over the head with it.
Special note must be made of the lettering in this first issue of RoboWolf. It’s probably close to 100% of mainstream comics artists and letterers that use digital fonts. Jake Smith is either breaking out the old-school Ames lettering guide or he just cares enough about lettering to work hard at integrating sound effects and the font into his own style seamlessly and organically. The explosive double-page spread on pages 4 and 5 uses not only a unique sound effect across both pages, but no less than three different letter sizes to emphasize RoboWolf’s speech pattern!
Besides a not-quite theme of spending quality time with family members before they are kidnapped by supervillains, there really are no redeeming social values on display here. However, Jake Smith gives us so much to take in, all you need to do is strap in and enjoy (survive?) the ride.
Jake Smith (W/A/L/C) • Dark Horse Comics, $4.99
Review by Gary Usher
