'The Jekyll Island Chronicles, Vol. 1: A Machine Age War' by Steve Nedvidek, Ed Crowell, Jack Lowe and Moses Nester is an attempt to create a new superhero team that seems a bit more rooted in history. Mostly it works, once the story gets going.

I went into this story without reading anything about it first. The story takes place in the early years of the 20th century in the United States, and features many historical people that called Jekyll Island home. There are rich captains of industry like Vanderbilt, Morgan and Rockefeller. There are also famous inventors like Ford and Tesla. Woodrow Wilson is also featured.

The idea is to create a team to fight off the great evil in the world. They do this by creating an odd team of superheroes to fight. One is a man who has lost his legs, but they get replaced by an odd pair of mechanical legs that help him jump and fight. Another is a woman who uses electricity as a weapon.

It takes a while to set this all up, so at first, I didn't know if this was some kind of historical non-fiction story or something different. Once the supers show up, it gets less dry. The art is fine for the story, and the concept works well enough. It feels like it can't decide if it wants to be rooted in our reality or some kind of clockwork alternate reality. It borders on both, but I wish they had just gone all out and established the clockwork age a bit more strongly. I liked the history aspects as well as the concept of the new superheroes. I feel like this could develop into something more interesting down the road.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Top Shelf Productions, Diamond Book Distributors, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.