It’s time again for Tag Team Thursday, where Clobber-Tron and Shaz-Bot take one of this week’s comics and share their opinions! This week they have an unfortunate encounter with:
Halcyon #1 from Image Comics
The PREVIEWS solicitation read
The story of what happens when the superheroes win. No crime, no war.
We disagree with the word STORY in that sentence.
C-T: I cant read Urdu, Arabic, Farsi, or any of the other languages spoken in the middle east so whenever I see these letters in a comic book it’s a bit of a turn off.
S-B: You do realize that the foreign text is just a font made to look like Arabic? It’s actually in English, it’s a clever way to do a foreign language without putting it in brackets and adding a footnote saying what language is being spoken, but also it’s really hard to read in spots, and kind of comes off as being a bit too clever.
C-T: Yeah I totally got that, I was wondering if it would blow past you or anybody else reading the book, I’ve been reading Zatana speak long enough to know what those crazy letterers are up too!
S-B: . In my mind, first issues are supposed to hook me in a way that makes me want to read more, Image usually is good about that with books like Chew, Guarding the Globe and the like, but in this book, it’s just introducing characters and a vague semblance of setting.
C-T: After the ultra violent JARHEAD scene we skip to an alternate reality where the combination of strange characters and background remind me of the 80’s G.I. Joe cartoons.
S-B: I kind of got a bit of a G.I. Joe vibe too, but only from Jarhead and the design of the main villain
C-T: I enjoy the art by Ryan Bodenheim and I’m really impressed. I don’t want to over compliment the guy but his pencils remind me of a cross between Frank Quitely and Chris Burnham!
S-B: I did like the art. I got a big Frank Quietly vibe from it, but with it’s own flair.
C-T: Ok on to the ‘story’, when Three weeks ago, today and ‘that moment’ are the time frame given new readers to align a story in their head with characters they’ve never seen before explosions and snippets of conversation between superheroes? And cops? And villains? I cant tell what’s what and I want to punch this book. There is no way issue #2 can reverse the damage done by this terrible narrative. If this becomes a classic story reprinted in a deluxe format I’ll eat my hat.
S-B Wow. You really didn’t like this book. I can’t really argue with your points though. My main problem is they introduce all these characters, but they don’t give us anything to connect with them on any level. If I don’t care about the situations, there is nothing there to keep me reading. It’s Tom Brevoort’s #2 rule of writing, You can have the cleverest setup ever (this is more convoluted then clever), but if you can’t make the reader care about the characters, you’re doing it wrong.
C-T I hated this book so much I promised to eat my well loved haberdashery if it becomes a raging success! Who the hell wrote this book Grant Morrison’s dog? Is this Marc Guggenheim fellow new to the game?
S-B: Guggenheim was one of the Spidey Brain Trust writers in addition to writing a lot for TV. I personally don’t think he’s too suited for comics work, but your mileage may vary. Although we both agree avoid this book like the plague.
Aside form the wonderful Ryan Bodenheim art that wraps up the first all negative Tag Team Thursday. See you next week.