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First off, let me say that this has one of the best, crispest splash pages I've seen in a while. Bá delivers a really gorgeous image of pulp sci-fi super-wrestling. Groovy. It recalled me immediately to Terminal City, Kid Gloves fighting his way "up the evolutionary ladder" against apes before fighting Science, as represented by robots. I like the retro pulp trappings that would normally be a "secret history" along the lines of Planetary being put up front, for all the world to see, regular schmoes betting on a wrestling machine between a man and a space monster. That said, half the voice-over for that first page is a little muddled, a little grammatically dissonant for a moment. Did anyone else find that? I got what was being said but it was phrased oddly.
The backstory that Way sets up is fairly zeitgeisty fare, built on a solid Midwich Cuckoos foundation with some Charles Xavier thrown in. We're left with a background mystery even as the backstory is set up, a mystery that will probably seem irrelevant at first but eventually tie into the foregrounded mystery.
It's a first issue. Let's be clear. Like RED says upthread, well, there's a lot of set-up and not a lot of action, per se, but Bá delivers some great visuals to carry us forward and Way certainly sets up enough that I'm at the very least interested in where this going. I'm very glad that we have only a minimum of time with the seven as children, because I kept having to consult the text page at the front to remind myself who was whom and even then only 1, 2, 3, and 7 get any real development; 5 disappears for the bulk of the story. Once they're adults, they look more distinct and start to demonstrate the rudiments of personality.
As much as Bá delivers great images, well, in places his work could use some strengthening. I would have liked to see one more person actively fall from the tower to clarify things, althoug the scripting with the gendarmes was partly to fault for this.
Number 7 -- the "unspecial one" -- isn't the Rumour. I like the Rumour already, and 7 is being drawn more clearly as a possible villain.
Grown-up Spaceboy is more exciting than the little kids, and I'm looking forward to more development from him. There were some good transitions there.
I worry that Way's trying to hit all the expected beats a bit too hard -- talking chimpanzee? Check. It's predictable that one was included and it made me a little sad. Why not a talking duck or a dog or just no talking animals?
Text pages were interesting, hard to believe it's been - what? Twenty-something years that the Watchmen text page approach has been around with any force? I would have actually preferred some backmatter a la Casanova, but I'm rather insidious with my desire to listen to writers and artists discussing their process.
It's nice. It feels like a Silver Age comic without being too derivative of the obvious sources like the JLA, sinking more into a pre-DC Silver Age 1950s territory. Doesn't feel like Hellboy at all, actually. It needs an issue or two to really get going, though. But I'm looking forward to it. |
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