What an ungodly mess! I've read #0, #1 and #2 and I'm still not sure I can explain the basic premise.
Ok, I can - but it'll be painful. You see, near the end of WW2 all of the heroes from 2
nd and 3rd tier publishers gathered to give speeches and alienate Fighting Yank. In the end, the T
ricorned One makes a bad judgment call and needs to rectify things 60 years later. The problem is he has an annoying ghost whispering in one ear and Black Terror screaming in the other. Now, I love many of these characters and consider
BT's costume to be one of the best ever designed, but there is no reason we need to bring back 50 characters at once. I wish it were just the case of too much of a good thing, but it's not.
This is an overly ambitious, ill-conceived and poorly executed project that fails to resonate with the reader. The writing is weak, as too many details are glossed over. I know that exposition is a dirty word in today's comic book vernacular, but a little bit is
ok if we're going to be shifting locales (and time periods) every other page. The artwork is pure Ross-clone - lots of puffed up chests and yelling. In the end if feels like we're watching the birth of some sort of 'Watchmen meets Last Days of the
JSA' Frankenstein Monster, with none of Moore's storytelling and all of Roy Thomas' excesses - right down to focusing on Hitler's
obsession with the occult. This is just a bloated disaster, and a better master plan should have been discussed at Dynamite so that these characters could have returned with a shred of dignity.
What an ungodly mess! I've read #0, #1 and #2 and I'm still not sure I can explain the basic premise. Ok, I can - but it'll be painful. You see, near the end of WW2 all of the heroes from 2nd and 3rd tier publishers gathered to give speeches and alienate Fighting Yank. In the end, the Tricorned One makes a bad judgment call and needs to rectify things 60 years later. The problem is he has an annoying ghost whispering in one ear and Black Terror screaming in the other. Now, I love many of these characters and consider BT's costume to be one of the best ever designed, but there is no reason we need to bring back 50 characters at once. I wish it were just the case of too much of a good thing, but it's not.
This is an overly ambitious, ill-conceived and poorly executed project that fails to resonate with the reader. The writing is weak, as too many details are glossed over. I know that exposition is a dirty word in today's comic book vernacular, but a little bit is ok if we're going to be shifting locales (and time periods) every other page. The artwork is pure Ross-clone - lots of puffed up chests and yelling. In the end if feels like we're watching the birth of some sort of 'Watchmen meets Last Days of the JSA' Frankenstein Monster, with none of Moore's storytelling and all of Roy Thomas' excesses - right down to focusing on Hitler's obsession with the occult. This is just a bloated disaster, and a better master plan should have been discussed at Dynamite so that these characters could have returned with a shred of dignity. 
1 comment:
Well said. I lasted, I believe, 3 issues (plus a one-shot that I think may've been a Free Comic Book Day product) but gave up in ... well, "disgust" is too strong a word. Maybe "apathy" fits.
Post a Comment