It's been forever since I've checked out a Torchwood comic, so I picked this one out at random.

That may have proven a mistake as The Return of the Vostok was a webcomic on a defunct site and now only available through the Wayback Machine. I appreciate the latter website for all it does in preserving internet history (and meaningful bits of culture with it) but it does lead to a cumbersome, slow, and disjointed reading experience.

It doesn't help that the writing is not at all well structured. There are some neat ideas with these ice-age monsters using winter to attack Cardiff, and early on there is some great stuff with the Torchwood crew just enjoying winter a little bit, and, to them at least, enjoying a bit of novel winter climate. I wish we got more of that in this book or just Torchwood in general because it makes our characters far more endearing than the sex pests the show would all too often portray most of Torchwood Three as. While it did leave me envious of said climate a bit, living over here in frigid Canada where such weather is a bit of an endurance challenge more than anything, the story itself left a lot to be desired.

The sole redeeming quality of The Return of the Vostok was the artwork . Adrian Salmon had a very distinct look to his work I didn't hate. It took some getting used to but I did come to enjoy it. He really brings some energy into something I would otherwise consider completely flat.