1 out of 5

Woof to vanity projects.  Amigo publications are few and far between and I keep fearing the imprint shutting down, so new stuff from Torres and artists Ángel Hernández and Diego Galindo was high on my list o’ gimmes.  The full-bleed inside cover splash of the first issue made my mouth water; the “based on the songs by Azul y Negro” credit made it dry up.  Ah, it’s a rock opera.  Or a synth one; Azul Y Negro is a huge Spanish act apparently, having made quite an impact on the synthpop scene.  And there were some American hits I’m sure I’d recognize.  But otherwise there’s no indication from Torres or Amigo editors what’s going on here – just a long horribly edited spiel in the back of the first issue from “Amuza Producciones” – we’ll assume they’re related to the band in some way – touting how genius Azul is.  This lack of context plus the “music saves the universe” set up start to reek too much of a work-for-hire.

And it wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t madly compressed – this future world sucked of individuality and run by a too-on-the-nose Tom Cruise-led Scientology cult and “Basso” plays carries his guitar around (but plays keyboard) and needs to reinvigorate the universe with his powerful tunes – whittled down to two issues, it’s running completely on the fumes of other dystopian stories and lacking any single moment that suggests why or how X, Y or Z.  It exists because it was contracted to exist, and the Azul y Negro album said so.  The other problem is that inconsistency hinted at by the keyboard / guitar thing – that’s a detail, but otherwise it applies to scope, making some things seem small but then they apply to the whole world a panel later.

To my excitement for the art, Hernández is gone by the second issue, and Galindo’s sketchy take on the world in issue 2 just can’t hold a candle to it.

This isn’t the worst thing in the world, but its lack of personality – and scripting hiccups that made it seem like even the writer was just rushing through – ruffled my feathers enough to make it unpleasant to read.  Shift it outside of the context of a concept album and give it some issues to actually establish mood and character and then get back to me.