Trying to keep your family from imploding is a tall order. Kit Hobbs is about to find out it’s an even taller order when that family has been piloting the Titan that protects New Hyperion from kaiju for generations. Between a spiraling brother, a powder keg of a father and a whole bunch of 20-story monsters, she’s got her work cut out for her in We Ride Titans #1, written by Tres Dean, drawn by Sebastian Piriz, colored by Dee Cunniffe and lettered by Jim Campbell for Vault Comics.
We Ride Titans is big. The opening battle between a titan and a kaiju is too massive to fit on the page. Sebastián Píriz pulls us tight on the action, gargantuan figures clashing, yes, but too large for us to see everything. We see a punch, but can’t track who threw it. A mandibled maw screams wide, but it’s hard to conceive what we are looking at. This is not carelessness, this isn’t a lack of structure. We Ride Titans achieves scale by the reader’s creeping realization that they truly have no frame of reference for the size and scope of these battles.
We Ride Titans is big. Tres Dean writes characters bursting with emotions, like a pot of water roiling as it creeps to the brim and over, just slightly, but not yet spilling. In a few short pages, we are invested in Kit and her tumultuous, distant family. The pressures of being the wall against all evil weighs heavy on them. Questions of history are raised, heavy questions of intergenerational trauma and the vices we keep hidden. Dean’s scripting and Píriz’s subtly expressive character acting pull readers in, engaging them for more.
We Ride Titans is a story about a mech pilot with daddy issues fighting monsters and dealing with trauma. When writing about a story like this, you want to avoid the low-hanging fruit by comparing it to Neon Genesis Evangelion. It’s impossible not to compare We Ride Titans to Neon Genesis Evangelion. In the first issue, Dean threads the needle in the same way many successful genre writers do; he uses the known and the expected of the medium as a backbone to tell the story he truly wants. Kit isn’t some whimpering adolescent desperate for father’s approval, she is confident in the life she chose away from her family. She is brought back in their orbit not because she needs something from them, but because her brother, the drunken jackass he is, needs something only she can give.
We Ride Titans is not a perfect first issue. The limited page count can make this issue feel more like a prelude than a feature event. The world is built just enough that readers can start putting together the shape based on their exposure to other, similar stories; which always runs the risk of the reader thinking about stories that are just plain better. Píriz is an incredibly kinetic artist, but an issue devoting the bulk of the page count to static, domestic scenes plays against his strengths. There’s a sequence midway through where Kit’s partner slams the door on her. It’s paced impactfully with a bit of flare and serves as a stark contrast to the functional layouts around it.
We Ride Titans gives readers a taste of something that could turn big. There’s a lot to love between the energetic action sequences and the strong emotional thread that ties our heroes together. The challenges here feel workable, like seeing the seams on an old rubber kaiju suit. They are compromises in service of the larger piece, something that with some practice and a bit of camera trickery can be hidden from view. There’s enough here to hook readers and trust that the story will pay off on its promises and start going full throttle. Like Kit says, “The hell do you need to rest for?”
Zachary Jenkins co-hosts the podcast Battle of the Atom and is the former editor-in-chief of ComicsXF. Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside all this.
