Man, if I could combine Mr. Terrific and Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE into one book, I’d really have something.
When I last spoke about those books, I’d just read Frankenstein 1 and Mr. Terrific 1. With Mr. Terrific 1-5 and Frankenstein 1-4 safely in my files, it’s time for a fuller judgment.
Frankenstein had the more promising start, but pretty much held the same note through the whole first arc. In Issue 1, Frankenstein & Co. went to a small town that was being invaded by monsters. In Issue 2, they stepped through a dimensional portal to a planet full of monsters. Back on Earth, their boss Father Time and Ray Palmer were monitoring things from SHADE HQ. In issues 2-4, Frankenstein & Co. killed monsters and the monster titans.
The team never found out anything about the monsters, Father Time and Palmer somehow deduced there were end-bosses from Earth. I enjoyed the book, but it felt like three issues of watching someone else play a video game. I think I’m skipping Issue 5.
Here’s what’s been happening in Mr. Terrific (SPOILERS!)
Mr. Terrific defeats Brainstorm with a standard overclocking attack, then finds out the villain was indirectly responsible for the death of Mr. Terrific’s wife’s. Mr. Terrific beats the villain to within an inch of his life, then is sickened by what he’s just done (because he’s a man of reason, right?). Mr. T exiles himself to space, where he gets shanghaied by alien slavers. He beats the slavers by convincing an alien hermaphrodite to use his/her energy absorption and projection powers to destroy the alien ship. Meanwhile, back on Earth, some douchey businessman tempts that one chick to sell out Mr. Terrific’s company.
Here are the rough edges: Mr. Terrific probably doesn’t need to feel so bad about beating up the villain, but it is a nice piece of characterization. The slavery bit isn’t subtext, Wallace hits it pretty hard. Mr. Terrific never sees the alien hermaphrodite’s power before she saves the day, so it’s not clear why chooses him/her as the solution. And that one chick is still pretty undefined.
Still, it’s the first NuDC title I’ve read to wrap a storyline. Heck, we’re two arcs in already. I feel like writer Eric Wallace has a point of view, and is taking me somewhere. I’m going to miss this series when it’s gone.
I knew OMAC would be cancelled as soon as it came out, but that news still hurts. My favorite book of the bunch. I’ll put it in my long boxes next to Monolith and every other book that fell to the Super/X/Spider/Bat curse, where no series without one of those prefixes can last past a dozen issues.
They’re adding ANOTHER Batman series. Hawk & Dove is getting the axe, but Liefeld is being handed three other books– wow, that makes great business sense. Looks like they’re still going for short term sales of new first issues rather than having a variety of healthy series that last– which tells me they haven’t grown the audience much beyond the same crowd that usually frequents the comic stores and just wants the old familiar stuff. Too bad, I’ve actually really enjoyed many of the books I’ve been picking up.
(Did I just say that? Someone check on Dara, make sure he hasn’t fainted.)
I’d like to hear more about the books you’re enjoying. I think one way to attract new readers would be to look like we’re enjoying ourselves. It’s not the biggest piece of the puzzle, but it’s something.
“and every other book that fell to the Super/X/Spider/Bat curse”
Dude, Avengers Vs. X-Men (aka AvX!) is gonna blow everything away. NOTHING WILL EVER BE THE SAME AGAIN EVER AGAIN! EVER!
Judging from the promotional art I’ve seen, AvX somehow involves the Phoenix. Where would the X-franchise be without those 30 Byrne/Claremont issues to keep mining over and over and over?
The thing about Avengers vs. X-Men that really gets me is that they’re also publishing a related limited series where it just shows an extended version of the fight scenes from the regular series. That’s right, an entire series depicting nothing more than EXTENDED, COVER-TO-COVER FIGHT SCENES!
But getting back to the 2 books mentioned here: I haven’t read Frankenstein yet, so I’d like to borrow someone’s copies. On the other hand, I have been reading Mister Terrific and really, really wanted to like it, but I feel that Wallace didn’t quite deliver the goods.
For one thing, out of all the “super science” craziness that could have kicked off the series, he chose to put Mr. T (er, that doesn’t sound right) up against a villain with the super original power of…mind control. seriously? The other thing that really bugs me is the sheer number of gratuitous splash pages, which do nothing but add to the decompressed nature of the story and waste precious space that could be used for any number of storytelling purposes, such as fleshing out characters. The fifth issue alone had 5 – that’s FIVE – splash pages! At a time when your regular monthly book is only 20 pages long, that’s a quarter of the book wasted on splash pages when there’s really no call for it.
Frustrating.