THE GOOD
Tone Rodriguez has a great sense of storytelling and composition. A classic style that, I really think, would be very well suited to a more classic-style title. I especially liked his double-spread that gets this issue started with a bang, in more ways than one. I did like Erik Larsen's variant cover too. It had great style and personality.
THE BAD
This whole comic felt very, very dated. Not surprisingly, it felt like a leftover from some of the bad excesses of the "grim and gritty" early 90s. That's to say, this was a really generic superhero comic that tries to come off as a "darker" with jagged metal armor costumes, groping narrations about the mean streets and anti-heroes wrestling with themselves over whether it's a good idea to continue going around and crippling low-level hoods. Even the satires and parodies of this period of comics got old years ago. I really couldn't take this seriously.
THE VERDICT - 1.5/5
Honestly, I couldn't shake the feeling after reading this that I'd just read a fake comic that'd been created for another story. If you've ever seen a movie or a TV show about a cartoonist, or one featuring regular characters starting their own comic... whatever sample they show from the comic usually embody bad stereotypes or out-of-date cliches. That's really what this felt like.
4 Comments