Review by Ian Keogh

This bulky paperback is a reboot for Wale Williams and his armoured alter-ego E.X.O., combining what YouNeek Studios originally published in 2015 as Part One and Part Two backed up with some new material.

E.X.O. doesn’t read well. Every superhero universe has their armoured hero, and Roye Okupe’s version is too derivative and predictable, and while some eye-catching art might have lifted it beyond its premise, that’s not what Sunkanmi Akinboye provides. His figures are stiff, he doesn’t like backgrounds, and there’s just no sense of wonder about his combat scenes.

Wale Williams is first seen as a teenager leaving Nigeria’s Lagoon City after a fallout with his technologist father. He feels his father has prioritised work over his family, and a tragic accident seals his view. Five years later he returns after his father has gone missing to discover his hometown is a very different place. The authorities are losing control, the Prytek corporation for whom his father used to work are very influential, and there’s a well financed terrorist group called The Creed looking to overthrow the government. While in other circumstances they might want the people behind them supporting their uprising, they’re shown as murderous thugs caring little for ordinary people.

Okupe isn’t just introducing E.X.O., who’s Wale in an armoured suit his father was developing before he left, but also a speedster who uses blades as a weapon. It’s likely readers will have guessed who she is before Okupe reveals it, and the same applies to another identity disclosed halfway through.

With better planning and more focus on what matters this might have been improved, but instead Okupe meanders, spending almost entire chapters on flashback scenes that could have been covered in a few panels while still providing the necessary character motivation.

Several years passed between the publication of this material and what follows in Volume Two, and that is an improvement.

However, Okupe and Akinboye also supply bonus back-up material starring another of their features, Malika, Warrior Queen. On the basis of the conversation Zahra has with her, rather too gushingly, Malika is also concerned about The Creed, but as with the main strip, the characters sometimes seem to be explaining to the audience, and too much dialogue doesn’t ring true. Akinboye’s art for this feature is better, still not fantastic, but at least now showing more variety and more thoughtful layouts.