Dawnrunner is a mecha-kaiju comic about the power of communication

Every popular work of mecha fiction, anime or not, isn’t just about cool robots. Whether it is the anti-war fundamentals Mobile Suit Gundam, Neon Genesis EvangelionWhether it’s an allegory for loving and being loved or a commentary on the way power is concentrated in the hands of a select few, the mecha genre is full of stories that go deeper than the chrome exterior of his humanoid war machines.

Dawnrunnerthe new original science fiction comic series from Detective Comics Writer Ram V and artist Evan Cagle (Catwoman #32) follows in the footsteps of these giants and creates a story centered around Anita Marr, a mech pilot in a post-apocalyptic future who must pilot a powerful new prototype to defeat an extra-dimensional threat. It may be a mecha-kaiju story, but it’s also a ghost story that depicts the relationship between Anita and a weapon that literally seems to have a mind of its own. It’s a big action drama with big, beautiful artwork and even bigger questions at its core. For example: What do all people have in common, even if they are centuries apart? Or, as Cagle puts it: “What if the military-industrial complex behaved more like Bandai?”

“I had this story in my head probably around 2015 or 2016,” Ram said in an interview over Zoom. “Conceptually, it started out as a mecha-kaiju story, but also had science fiction, human drama and ghost story elements. The basic idea is that people communicate with each other over time.”

Although he knew the basic concept, a mecha-kaiju story that could be summarized as follows:Pacific Rim as told by the people behind it Arrival“It wasn’t until Ram came across Evan Cagle’s artwork on social media that the idea came about Dawnrunner began to fully come to life.

“I hadn’t really acted on it until I saw this illustration Evan had done for Neon Genesis Evangelion

called Golgotha. I saw that and left, Man, if I ever do this mecha kaiju thing, The is the artist I have to work with.Shortly thereafter, Cagle reached out to Ram to compliment him on his 2018 graphic novel Grafity’s Wall, as well as expressing his desire to work together in the future. “It was mostly a coincidence, but partly it was one of those ideas that had been floating around in my head for a while. That’s why I’m glad everything worked out.”

It takes place almost a century after a race of mysterious gigantic monsters called the Tetza invaded Earth. Dawnrunner is set in a world where civilization has radically changed – governments have been dissolved and replaced by an oligopoly of weapons manufacturers dedicated to fighting the Tetza with colossal mechanized weapons known as the Iron Kings. More than 100 years of stalemate conflict have transformed the war against the Tetza into a television spectacle on par with a gladiatorial sport – where top pilots are celebrated as celebrities and defeating the Tetza is a formality in the service of maintaining power and profit.

“More than anything, it reflects my view on the commercialization of human conflict that we are seeing now,” Ram told Polygon. “You know, there’s war in Ukraine, there’s war in Israel and Palestine, and I think that Western and global media largely view these conflicts as opportunities for engagement [and] to explain an exciting story to their viewers. Every time I see or hear someone describe something as “an exciting day in Ukraine today” or “What are the military tactics of this or that operation, oh, so interesting?”, I just think of someone like that has little to do with the matter. All of humanity could ever make a comment like: “This conflict was very interesting today.” To me, what we see in it Dawnrunner is a logical consequence of this.”

Cagle compares this commercialization to an existential threat to humanity Dawnrunner to the way toy manufacturers like Bandai marketed Gundam model kits. “For example, you introduce a new mech or a new enemy every week and then release a toy of it in the following months. There are different in-universe reasons for releasing a new toy every week, but that’s all kind of bullshit, right? Everyone knows that people buy a new model every week so that they can sell you a toy. Dawnrunner sort of asks the question, ‘What if the military-industrial complex behaved more like Bandai?'”

This philosophy naturally carries over into the designs of the Iron Kings themselves – particularly the Dawnrunner. Cagle cites several examples from anime and manga that inspired him when designing the series’ titular mech, from films such as Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack And Metal Skin Panic MADOX-01 to standard WOTHAM And The Five Star Stories. “It’s really just a grab bag of everything I love,” Cagle says. “I wanted this [Hajime Katoki]Fins in the style of this Gundam on Dawnrunner’s back; I wanted that [Kazumi Fujita]Feet in the style of Hi-Nu Gundam. It feels a lot like kitbashing, trying to figure out how to put all these things together in a cohesive way.”

The result is a mecha design that pays homage to the like Mobile Suit Gundam And Neon Genesis Evangelion, all while being something entirely its own: a towering, cyclopean behemoth with bulging, jutting thighs and an eerie, skeletal torso. “From his color scheme, racing aesthetics played a big role in his design,” Cagle told Polygon. “It doesn’t have straight lines; Everything is a curve, everything is a compound curve, everything is a Bézier curve. It’s all these flowing Ferrari lines, unlike the other Iron Kings which have a lot more straight lines.”

However, beyond the uber-stylish art style and sleek mechanical design lies the beating heart of Dawnrunner: the protagonist of the series, Anita Marr. Anita, the star jockey for Cordonware, one of the five mega-corporations responsible for building the Iron Kings, is an intensely private person who happens to be one of the most famous people in the world and takes on the burden of her role as a public figure and a soldier with solemnity and poise. When Anita is assigned to pilot the state-of-the-art Iron King prototype Dawnrunner during a routine mission against a Tetza, everything seems to be going as usual.

That changes when Anita, momentarily incapacitated in the middle of battle, is overwhelmed by an out-of-body vision of a man she doesn’t recognize. The second issue begins following the battle. Anita has successfully managed to defeat the Tetza, although she is plagued by doubts due to her experience as a Dawnrunner pilot.

[Ed. note: Spoilers for Dawnrunner #2 below.]

It turns out that Dawnrunner’s operating system is based on the spirit of Ichiro Takeda, a soldier whose body was recovered after the first Tetza invasion over a century ago. To successfully pilot Dawnrunner, Anita must somehow convince Ichiro – who has no idea that he is dead or that his spirit is being preserved to power a mecha – to help her in her fight against the Tetza. This is easier said than done, as both Anita and Ichiro must learn to trust each other in order to create a force that can save humanity from extinction.

“By creating this gap between Anita and Ichiro, we’re diving into one of the things I like to explore,” Ram told Polygon. “Not just through Dawnrunnerbut a lot of my stories are about the idea that people are fundamentally born to communicate and make connections, regardless of how many things lie between them. Dawnrunner is really a narrative about how you have to make connections, in this case literally across lifetimes, and how that connection then reinforces what Dawnrunner wants to do in this world. It’s a two-pronged narrative about connection and communication, both between a pilot and a mech and between a person and another person.”

A post-apocalyptic mecha-kaiju drama with exquisite illustrations and a resounding emotional narrative. Dawnrunner It already looks to be one of the most exciting releases of 2024. With only two issues of the planned five issues released so far, Ram V and Cagle remain confident about the series’ story arc and resolution, but leave open the possibility for future stories in the Dawnrunner universe down the line. “I feel like it stops even at the end of that first trade, in a place where we could easily go back and leave, like this: And then it happened next year. But we have other things planned, and we want that to take its time and grow a little bit before we think about coming back to it.”

Dawnrunner Issue 2 can be purchased digitally at Dark Horse Comics and in print wherever comics are sold. A collective edition has arrived November.