Comic Review: gen:LOCK “hope:LESS Part 2”

OVERVIEW

Chase meets with the three beings who make up Sycorax, who explain how they came to be. Apparently they were triplets who were selected for the Gen:Lock program by Dr. Weller to show how compatible they could be, but as their minds merged, their bodies began to fail. They started to reach Phase Two of the program and demanded to continue the experiment until they lost their physical bodies completely, which also allowed them to merge into one being that Weller assumed had died, when really they escaped into the net. The three of them relate to Chase, who is now also without a body, and so decide to show him how to best use his new skills.

From their unique outside perspective, they help him see that the war will only continue while both sides fight, but Chase sees a solution: the Shogunate mech, which requires a thousand pilots to move.

OUR TAKE

We finally get back to the Gen:LOCK comic, which also means covering these things at a half an issue pace and only that much to talk about. This part, which concludes the fourth proper issue, finally checks back in with Chase since his disappearance and gives us a proper explanation for who this Sycorax group is. Essentially, if Weller is Professor X of the X-Men, the Sycorax trio are that retconned second group of mutants that he made everyone forget about in retrospect (and who we will likely never hear about again once this is over). It’s certainly something to find out that there were other Gen:LOCK pilots that we weren’t aware of, but it also strains credulity considering that the group that we met in the show are meant to be the first ones. Then again, this is supposed to be canon with the show itself, so who am I to question it.

Unfortunately, Sycorax’s personality as a group seems to just be a pretty flavorless shared consciousness that has no real take on the conflict other than “war is bad, we are superior life forms who are above such things”. I guess we’re supposed to take Chase’s willingness to continue looking for solutions to mean that he is better for still having some humanity, but it’s not like he’s given much of a choice to do otherwise. Not to mention that this is a supplementary comic, not something crucial for following the plot of the show, so you can’t expect much in the way of story altering events to happen. That kind of sours the investment someone might have if they aren’t already invested in the series as a whole, but then that’s when a story like this should try exploring more personal and character based stories instead of trying to make itself more important than it’s supposed to be.

At the very least, this is still managing to keep my interest in seeing how things will resolve, since everyone’s still involved in interesting enough stories. It looks like we’re getting closer to the climax of the comic’s story, and the stakes feel high enough that I am compelled to keep reading, so clearly they’re doing something right here. I just wish that they didn’t take so long to publish half issues that keep my investment in the story on life support for nearly a month before I get to see how things continue.