IXth Generation #1

In the future there is no more natural death, no needs unfilled and everything you could ever want is yours... as long as you're one of the ones chosen to live in this new Utopia and you're willing to subjugate yourself to these new self-proclaimed gods with "IX"s emblazoned on them. Do the ends truly justify the means? Is a utopia built on genocide worth the price? Aphrodite, Velocity, Hades, and the other Nines establish fiefdoms in this new world and attempt to rule.

Their internal clashes have escalated, but they are forced to put that aside as they face off against the relentless hordes of the Darkness. The sins of the past have come to claim those who would pretend to be Gods. The cybernetic future established in APHRODITE IX and CYBER FORCE finally comes face-to-face with the supernatural ARTIFACTS side of the Top Cow universe.

I've dispensed of my usual intro, where I let you all know who the creative team of the comic you are now reading about, just to illustrate a point. Have you read that intro text? Really read it? It's a pretty fucking dense thing, that sets up how several different IP's are now sharing one comic. Be it The Darkness acting as the bad guy of the piece, or the Witchblade making an appearance,  IX Generation seems to be less interested in making a unique story of it's own and more interested in seeing how many different IP's it can cram into one comic.

On the face of it, you can see the appeal, especially when mashup culture is so synonymous with pop culture we no longer have to call anything a mashup. When it's standard practice to sample a song to form the backing track of another, why bother with the pretence that the two different cultures exist independently anymore? Whilst the cynicism may come off as grating, even if Generation IX is enjoyable, these different insertions of separate franchises does have an adverse effect on the comic itself.

For one, I actually quite like world we get introduced to in the first few pages. 9 separate beings, formed to be the best of humanity and able to spawn an almost number of copies of themselves, who instead decide to go to war because they we're never raised to display or accept maturity. Think of what a great concept that it!

The first half of the issue, with an art style that is very much it's own, is wonderful to behold. The artwork is clean, but still manages to display the horrors of war. It's slightly anime influenced, but also draws from western influences, so the character work ends up feeling a lot more grounded that either of the material it is influenced by. It...it just sort of gets dumb when the latter half of the comic introduces the afore mentioned IP's.  Not in a fun way either.

This issue - if nothing else – has inspired me to check out the original Aphrodite IX series created by the same team. If it has even half of the interesting concepts the opening half of the issue has, I'll be buying the whole series in quick succession. I'll certainly be around for Issue 2 of this series. I'm just hoping this series manages to keep it's own identity in amongst the smorgasbord of franchising possibilities.

Cover image courtesy of Top Cow.

You can buy Generation IX via comixology, or your local comic retailer.

Geek-o-Rama received a copy of this comic for the purpose of this review. All thoughts, comments and opinions are those of the individual reviewer.