Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: Invincible by Robert Kirkman & Cory Walker ::
by William the Bloody
Mark Grayson is pretty much a typical high school senior. He has homework and an after school job flipping burgers, his best friend, William, etcetera. Did I fail to mention that his father is Omni-Man, Defender of Democracy, the most powerful super hero on the planet Earth? Mark's alien-DNA oriented powers are finally kicking in and he's eager to jump into the hero game. After getting the hang of flying with goggles and a handkerchief over his face for identity protection, his father decides it's time to visit the super hero tailor (prom dresses by day, hero costumes by night), Mark just needs to settle on a name. "You're not invincible, you know..." Well, if not, then he's close enough. Mark's now balancing school work and super heroics, and also finds out a classmate is none other than Atom Eve, member of Teen Team. Yes, things were going well for newbie hero Invincible, with ties to Teen Team, family support and dear old dad being the most powerful and respected hero on the planet... then things take a turn....
The Good: Walker's art is simple and clean and works well for this book. Bill Crabtree's colouring also accents the art well. The writing is pretty good, as well. One thing I can't stand is overusing of text blocks to get the scene across. This comic doesn't do that at all, thank goodness. It primarily relies on the visuals and word balloons to tell the story and it does it perfectly. The use of aliens and super teams and all the super hero comic book clichés is actually done quite well, interesting and pretty fresh. This book takes place in the Image hero universe so characters like Savage Dragon and Superpatriot make an occasional appearance, but it's usually restricted to the background, and if not blends rather seamlessly so they don't feel out of place or forced on us or make us wonder who this character is. The continuity is quite amazing. I really want to pat Kirkman on the back for such outstanding attention to detail from book to book. Something that happens in issue one has a pay off in issue six, stealthily thrown in, maybe without you even realizing it. THAT's how to do it! I was glad that they threw in the Free Comic Book day story as well. Nice.
The Bad: I was severely disappointed in the guest pages done by Erik Larsen. Yes, I know that sometimes a substitute from the regular artist can be needed for various reasons, but Larsen?? Ew. Seriously, ew. There's this character doing an investigation who is an OBVIOUS rip-off (or homage, whatever, it's still bad) of Rorschach from Watchmen except that he has this monster-ish face and he kind of bothers me. I don't know if he's a pre-existing Image character (he has Larsen's Savage Dragon stink about him), but I don't like that he exists at all.
All in all, not a bad book. Not at all. Volume one is more or less exposition and might give the impression that this is going to be a boring title, but if you give it a chance, there's a small twist in Volume 2, that turns into a HUGE twist in Volume 3, which shows that this will be no ordinary yawn of a teen hero book. It's not SUPER awesome and I'm not going to say it's the best book out there, but it's damn close. Volumes 1 through 4 go for about 13 USD each, and if you want to try your luck at some decidedly NOT marvel or DC hero action, you just might consider it money well spent.
A-
