“Titan: God Machine”, written by Dan Abnett, illustrated by Anthony Williams and Andy Lanning

256 pages, Games Workshop, ISBN-13: 978-1844161232

Titan: God Machine is a graphic novel, reproduced here in black and white for the first half of the book greyscale for the second half. The subject is the adventures of the Warlord Titan Imperius Dictatio and its crew. Titans are the ultimate in 41^st Millennium war machines, standing over 100’ tall and armed with volcano cannons, turbo lasers and gatling blasters (BFG’s, every God-Emperor lovin’ one of ‘em). They have but one purpose: to kill anything that potentially threatens the Imperium of Man. Imperius Dictatio is commanded by Princeps Ervin Hekate, who collects his field promotion when Dictatio’s original Princeps dies on the job. Hekate soon finds himself mentally bound to the great machine, and like the rest of his command crew, is equipped with grafted-on ports which provide a direct physical connection to the Titan. When this connection is active, Princeps Hekate controls the power of a mechanical god of war; when the link is broken, even for maintenance, he begins to suffer withdrawal symptoms akin to those of a drug addict. Hekate lives to fight and fights to live.

Dan Abnett has shown himself to be one of the better writers of action oriented SF, be it in comic book or novel form, but Titan: God Machine allows him so little room for development that he struggles to inject anything that might be described as a more than one-dimensional. What we’re presented with is centered around destruction: giant war machines that look like Transformers on steroids, traversing worlds and blowing the hell out of anything they encounter. The impact of the artwork suffers from being reduced in size, more so in the first half, as the transition to greyscale helps with the definition of scenes. An extended belch of almost non-stop action includes a campaign on Vivaporius, a world where a swarm of Alien-like creatures called the Tyranids dominate; here, the story briefly flickers into life when the Tyranid capture and possess another Warlord Titan. Unfortunately, just as this sequence is showing promise, it is abruptly cut short with another example of obergewalt. What I found particularly irritating is that every so often there’s a ghost-like glimpse of a real story, trying to get out, but all threads which in a better title and with more imaginative editing might’ve been developed into interesting sub-plots, inevitably fall under the glorification of wanton destruction. All that remains is a rather soulless emotionally truncated tale that will appeal only to those who think that war is fun and might is right. Anyone else, I suspect, who has previously enjoyed the complexity and quality of Abnett’s work, will recognize this as being the author on auto-pilot.