3 out of 5

No idea if / when the next issue of this will drop, so… yeah.

Zack Soto is a recent stumbled-across discovery, recent enough that I can’t say I’ve formed an overall opinion yet, but I’m very much intrigued.  I do recall when Power Button came out, but I’m not positive I gave it a gander; it’s been the more recent issues of The Secret Voice that brought me back.  And it’s probably a good thing I’ve gone in that order, because there’s really not enough in this zero issue to swing me one way or the other.  At a high level, it’s a handsome, pamphlet-sized indie release: glossy, thick covers with a bold color palette of bright blues and pinks and yellow text; loosely colored interiors with a similar scheme, the visuals leaning on a surreal aesthetic fitting the “sci-fi / cosmic” classification listed on the backcover.  But as a standalone read, it’s very much worth noting that there’s a “Next: Earth!” teaser on the final page, indicating that this is part of a longer story; issue 0 offers only the barest indicators of what an ‘ongoing’ Power Button series could provide.  Within, we learn the origin story of Omega Knight #5439, which, in one of my favorite versions of origin-tellings, is a name that has more impact once it has more context.  Soto’s narration is pretty sparse, a sentence or two per page, relying on his visuals – an appealing sketchy Michel Fiffe-ish variant with some Ditko-esque surrealness sprinkled atop – to carry us through.  Which they do, and the story’s “twist” is an impressive lateral-plotting type of move, although Power Button’s briefly touched upon emotional touchpoint (a relationship) gets sort of a short shrift.

There’s simply not enough in this zero issue to make me write my congressman, demanding a followup.  But Soto, as I’ve blabbed about above, has certainly caught my interest, and the ideas in and style of PB in no way dispel that.