The Forged vol. 1: Operation Black Box
It is the Eleventh Millenium of the Rule of the Eternal Empress and a team of her elite commandos, the Forged, find themselves tasked with a relatively straightforward mission. Go down to the planet Gehenna, and retrieve the black box of a ship that crashed there. The team is a little unimpressed with this mission as at least one of them is worried that they’re not going to get to shoot anything during it. Except that the leader of this squad of female warriors, Alpha, has a run in with one of the Empress’ Cassandras who serve as an extension of her will and she finds out that this operation may be a lot more dangerous than any of them first thought.
This first volume of “The Forged” comes to us from co-writers Greg Rucka and Eric Trautmann and artist Mike Henderson. It promises the kind of thrills that “‘Conan,’ ‘Heavy Metal,’ and all the other comics you tried to hide from your parents,” used to offer and that’s overselling things quite a bit. It’s actually a pretty straightforward military/sci-fi with an attention to detail and crispness of execution that won’t be unfamiliar to fans of Rucka’s previous work. So if you’re coming in with the expectation of seeing a crew of badass female commandos in armored suits murdering a bunch of alien bugs, then you’re not going to have a bad time.
What’s unavoidable, though, is how much the basic setup for this series appears to have been inspired by “Warhammer 40K.” My experience with that franchise has been limited to the “Marneus Calgar” comic series, reading articles on Polygon that recount the more insane aspects of its world, and hearing about it from Steve and his experiences with “Darktide” and the books. While I’ll admit that this is only cursory experience, the far-future setting, a leader who has spent millenia on the throne, highly trained warriors in power armor, and fighting against inescapable cosmic horror does make me go “Hmmmmmm…” when thinking of comparisons between these things.
To “The Forged’s” detriment, unfortunately. I can understand the creators desire to not drop a lot of insane worldbuilding on the reader in the very first volume. It’s just that everything here feels kind of bland, really. Even when cosmic horror starts creeping into the main plot, I still couldn’t help thinking of all the craziness I’ve read about that occurs regularly in the “40K” universe. I realize my limited familiarity with that franchise doesn’t make me qualified to make that comparison, but I just don’t feel confident in recommending this to people who are big fans of it.
As for everyone else, “Operation Black Box” is still a solidly executed story that doesn’t quite live up to its promise of over-the-top thrills. It has that aforementioned professional execution, and the art from Henderson isn’t bad. Regrettably, it’s not detailed or striking enough to warrant presentation in this volume’s oversized format. Henderson does a good job with the bits of cosmic horror at the end, which is surprising since his work to that point has felt very restrained even when the bullets start flying as the bugs attack. Like the volume as a whole, it’s not bad but not as good as I was hoping it would be.