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BOOK OF THE WEEK: MOPED ARMY

There's something of a tradition of engine love in my family. My Dad is a self-taught mechanical genius, or so he claims before cheerfully breaking cars with gay abandon and a spanner. My eldest brother drives his cars like he rode his motorbikes: with a terrifying blind disregard for his own mortality. And my younger-older brother used to serve his country by fixing the engines of impossibly huge aeroplanes, in order that they might transport machines of war, much-needed food aid, or on one notable occasion, a drunk medical student from Manchester to the Falkland Isles.

I don't share my family's fascination, but I can't say that I'm completely immune to the combustion engine's charms: there's a Chrysler dealership in Bishop's Stortford with an indelible, Turinesque mark on the window, where I spent many a day staring at the 1996 Dodge Viper and weeping into my empty wallet.

Man's love for all things greasy extends into the realm of comics in a number of different ways, from the fast and furious world of INITIAL D to the suspiciously transparent joys of the TRANSFORMERS (car with boobies, that's all I'm saying). And beyond that, there's a sub-genre of 'Motor Comics' that deals with the communities that spring up around the vehicles as readily as any other obsession.

Paul Sizer's MOPED ARMY (Café Digital Studios) deals with just such a community, a real-life organization of Vespaphiles and scootaholics that's more Honda Addicts than Hell's Angels. The book projects the gang two hundred years into tomorrow, into a world of sharp suits and sharper class divides. It's a cyberpunky backdrop familiar to fans of Marvel's long-forgotten 2099 imprint and Katsuhiro Otomo's AKIRA.

Judging by the extensive previews here (in PDF) and here (non-PDF), MOPED ARMY will have much the same spirit of Youth Solidarity as AKIRA or Dave Gibbons' THE ORIGINALS. However, the cast (and their vehicles) have a kitbashed look that distinguishes them from the slick future-Mod aesthetic of Gibbons' earlier work.

The preview pages also remind me of Brian Wood's counter-cultural comics POUNDED and THE COURIERS, but with a purer moral dichotomy, reminiscent of a hundred high school dramas. The Moped Army are The Nerds, picked on (and off) by the unexpectedly vicious Rich Kids. Browbeaten central character Simone is caught between both worlds. But for how long?

Sizer's graphic novel boasts appealing character art and a solid (future) worldview. I'm sure that MOPED ARMY will transcend the familiarity of the core premise, doing both creator and community proud. [Matthew Craig]