In this review of Lady Mechanika: The Devil in the Lake #1, Lady Mechanika embarks on a mission to find a lost exhibition in Siberia. The exhibition was in search of a living dinosaur.
Lady Mechanika: The Devil in the Lake #1
Writer: Joe Benitez and M.M. Chen
Artist: Siya Oum
Color Artist: Beth Sotelo
Main Cover: Joe Benitez
Variant Covers: Siya Oum, Joe Benitez
Release Date: September 4, 2024
This review contains spoilers
The lake is Lake Labynkyr, an isolated body of water in the Siberian wilderness. It houses a secret that will not be discovered. So enters monster hunter the cybernetic Lady Mechanika of England.
The Princess of Russia has come all the way to the English estate of Lady Mechanika to hire her. She wants Mechanika to lead a rescue mission to Siberia to find her missing friend and her husband. They went to the lake to investigate the Labynyrsky Chyort, a mythical beast that lives in the lake and is possibly a living dinosaur. Lady Mechanika accepts the job but she will. Go alone. Her partner Mr Lewis had a falling out with the heroine and now is alone and drunk.
Lady Mechanika will not be alone on this exhibition, the princess has hired an interpreter, Yevgeny Sergeyevich Morosov and two of her imperial guards, Borislav Nikonovich and Ivan Alexeyevich to join the trek through the rough terrain to the lake. The Princess also hired a guide Tygyn who has a bird named Khotoy. Tygyn does not speak either Russian or English but he does speak Yakut. The interpreter is fluent in all three languages.
The exhibition starts out, Tygyn on a sled pulled by a team of reindeer that has a fear of Mechanika. The others will travel in a motorized carriage that unfortunately stalls forcing all to travel by the sled.
They make camp and the three discover that Lady Mechanika is not a superhero as much as she is a cyborg. This makes the men wary but they continue on. That night Lady Mechanika has a nightmare that involves zombies complaining to her that she failed them. She is jolted awake and the team hears a howl. On. Investigation they find a mother wolf and her cub. The mother is dead so Tygyn moves to kill the baby. Lady M<echanika stops him and takes the cub herself determined to not leave it alone in the snow.
The pass has become too difficult for the sled so the team travel safe the rest of the way on foot. They stumble and start to fall off the mountain. Mechanika works to at least the humans and Tygyn finds a cave that may already be occupied. The two guards enter. The others hear shooting and Vanya disheveled and terrified emerges. Lady Mechanika is suddenly attacked by a white tiger that knocks her, it and the baby wolf off of the mountain.
Analysis
This is a very dense issue. It sets up the mission and we get a little introduction to the characters. Since this is the 9th volume with Lady Mechanika, she is well established. From this reader however, I have never read a story with this character. It was easy to follow. ThereThe is a reference to a falling out between the partners but any backstory is not needed. The exchange, if it can be called that was enough to create the emotional punch the scene needed.
It was also very good that the uniqueness of Lady Mechanika was explained but it was explained through the shock of the other characters seeing her glowing red eyes for the first time. As a new reader, I had the same shock and I was never taken out of the story for unnecessary exposition. The information was shared through the dialog and the art. Little hints throughout until the “reveal” in the camp site.
The plot is touched on so we do not have a whole lot of information about the nature of the creature. It has not been shown yet but we do see an injured deep sea diver reaching the lake’s surface in a tatored dive suit. No indication of who this character is but he is only one man. The others could very well be dead.
The art really is effective in creating the tone of the story. This story is of the steampunk genre, meaning that it takes place in the 19th century at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution so the gadgets are expansive with an old time aesthetic. The art really conveys this aesthetic well. The characters are unique and this even goes to the details shown in the animals which for now are standard biological creatures.
The dream sequence is not drawn as a dream itself with the use of the same vivid colors, as vivid as can be seen in the night. The shocking aspect is in the zombies. This scene is shown and then the action shifts to the discovery of the dead wolf and her cub. It is as if this detail is just placed into a file cabinet until later.
Final Thoughts
A very good jumping on point for readers who do not know Lady Mechanika. As one of those readers, I am looking forward to following this story and I have even picked up the earlier volumes to satiate my steampunk cravings.
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