Overlord Max Antagonizes Charismatically
The Good: The cover is definitely the best so far. The perspective is very nice, with Kevin Kho bolting for the only empty space on the cover, being chased by weird gators while O.M.A.C. towers over him. The space he's heading for just happens to be a circle in the very center of the cover. It draws your eyes right to the center, then in a unique spiral outwards.
After all the on-the-run chaos of the first three issues, it's nice to see things settle down a bit, and start to build an actual status quo, with Brother I and Kevin Kho starting to come to an agreement.
Kevin's been running for three issues straight, but now he's returned to his home, and the direct fallout from the explosive start is all starting to come together.
This settling into a more set pace also brings about the beginning of a focus on Kevin Kho, the man. After seeing 3 issues of him mostly just smashing
I'm noticing that Keith Giffen's art is actully pretty great. The cartoony-ness already worked well, but I'm really starting to see the surprising amount of detail put into things like shadows and the folds in clothes.
Maxwell Lord is dangerously genre savvy. He takes advantage of the shared universe to set up what will likely be a pretty damn badass crossover for the next issue.
This issue also emphasizes what I loved most about the second issue. The whole super secret chess game between Maxwell Lord and Brother I. It's an intriguing concept with some pretty darn good execution.
The Bad: Despite getting an increased focus on Kevin, the dude still has very little actual characterization. His dialogue is all incredibly standard for someone in the situation, and none of his interactions with anyone give any indication of any kind of unique personality traits to speak of. Honestly, the only reason Kevin is interesting is because he's O.M.A.C., so maybe Brother I really DID do him a facor.
Brother I has been shown to be a ridiculously omniscient and powerful force, and he's cut off from Kevin BECAUSE HE LOSES COVERAGE IN A FREAKING SUBWAY? I call incredibly BS shenanigans.
For as genre savvy as Maxwell Lord is, I'm surprised he's so quick to murder pawns who fail him. Usually he keeps things around as long as possible until they compeltely exhaust their usefulness, and failing him once isn't outliving their usefulness, at least not so consistently.
In Conclusion: 4/5
Despite a stupidly flimsy plot device, and Kevin being a blank slate of a character, the overall depth of this issue is above the first 3, and it starts to actually do things differently. Maxwell Lord is being the epic chessmaster he is, and Brother I is responding the same, but not yet needing to change his strategy more than subtly to keep on top of things. Plus we're teased about something more to give this issue a bit more juice. All the smashing is fun, but I have no idea why people are comparing this to Hulk. O.M.A.C. isn't totally mindless, he's just under extreme control. And sure they both smash, but O.M.A.C.'s smashing is calculated, intelligent, and driven by Brother I instead of berserker rage. It's a shame people don't appreciate this more for what it is, a fun series.
