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hmm.
well, The 0 issue is dead cheap and it's easy enough to find out for oneself, but sure, I'll give it a go.
I guess I'd clarify and say if your tastes lean towards something besides the silver age reverential trip of ASS which I'd say is the other contender for best superhero comic right now, then black summer is on the other pole from that.
it seems like a mature example of what would come out the other end of all the deconstructionist nonsense of the last twenty years. Ellis is reigning in a lot of his tics to deliver a pretty pure working out of a compelling superhero notion. ie; where does a superhero draw the line, where does society draw it for them, and what happens if they cross it?
the characters are not fanatics, hacked up cardboard cutouts or anything like that. you feel real personalities, real pain, especially in tom noir, and the anguish of thwarted idealism, which is inevitably what would happen to a 'superhero' in anything like a real world. as the series goes on you can see them sliding into the horror of having to go to war with their own country just to save their own lives. it's an honest treatment of something on the scale of marvel civil war, I guess. You feel the real tragedy of a world that let superheroes exist for a while, as a fluke, but is now determined to wipe them out.
and in the background of all that you have john horus, who appears to be willing to destroy the country in order to save it, and it appears to be open question whether or not he's actually right to do so.
there's a refreshing lack of sentiment or reverence for fan expectation. avatar could milk this for years, but this is clearly the end of the story, whether or not they ever show a beginning. it's strong, it's direct, it's honest and there's no frills or bullshit.
On the art side, ryp's pencils practically float off the page. The compositions are holding in check a lot of the incoherent craziness of his earlier work, which you can still see in the various wraparound covers, which are all gorgeous. He's got the depth and texture of a quitely or darrow, and ellis is giving him some stronger storytelling chops here. The colors are top notch, and the thing is coming out like clockwork, which takes away the sour taste of endless delays. in fact, issues one and two came out even earlier than they were solicited.
so yeah, if the sugary sweetness of morrisson quitely on superman isn't the end all be all for you, then this firmly rules the other side of the fence right now. |
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