And this putrid, ugly, abomination is the single most disturbing comic book I have ever set eyes upon. It's not that this thing is bad, you have to understand. Mere incompetence I could deal with. It's that, down to it's rotten core, this thing is wrong. It starts out promisingly enough, with a troupe of superpowered children doing battle with the Eiffel Tower and, inevitably, Zombie-Robot Gustav Eiffel. Stupid, yes, but entertainingly so. Then comes the abrupt time skip to adulthoold, and then everything just plain goes to shit.
The problem is that none of the characters, and I mean none of them, are sympathetic. Or, for that matter, interesting. They are a petty, dirty, selfish, cruel bunch and I feel dirty for spending as little as an hour with them. Additionally, the comic attempts to create an entire, fabricated continuity for its heroes, which worked in Watchmen and fails utterly here. Every single thing that happens is obtuse, nonsensical, unnecessarily cruel, and above all, pointless. It's like if Axe Cop were written by a manic-depressive, whiny emo child.
Worst of all, there is no theme or message to be found, anywhere. It can't be "It Hurts to Be a Superhero," because Watchmen already did that, and better. It can't be "Blessed Are the Meek" because the most touching scene in the book, a flashback in which the lone powerless child is assured by her simian butler that she doesn't have to kill people to prove that she is strong, is ruined by her murdering him, horribly, in the present on the very next page.
This is not a comic. It is a man breaking his toys and getting off on it. Stay away.
A Horribly Broken Umbrella
This is the most disturbing comic book I have ever read.
I want you to take a moment and let that sink in. This is the most disturbing comic book I have ever read. I'm not sure how to stress this enough.
Here, let me attempt to clarify:
I have read Watchmen. I have read Maus. I have read Sin City and Preacher and 100 Bullets. I have read Transmetropolitan, all of it, without blinking.
And this putrid, ugly, abomination is the single most disturbing comic book I have ever set eyes upon. It's not that this thing is bad, you have to understand. Mere incompetence I could deal with. It's that, down to it's rotten core, this thing is wrong. It starts out promisingly enough, with a troupe of superpowered children doing battle with the Eiffel Tower and, inevitably, Zombie-Robot Gustav Eiffel. Stupid, yes, but entertainingly so. Then comes the abrupt time skip to adulthoold, and then everything just plain goes to shit.
The problem is that none of the characters, and I mean none of them, are sympathetic. Or, for that matter, interesting. They are a petty, dirty, selfish, cruel bunch and I feel dirty for spending as little as an hour with them. Additionally, the comic attempts to create an entire, fabricated continuity for its heroes, which worked in Watchmen and fails utterly here. Every single thing that happens is obtuse, nonsensical, unnecessarily cruel, and above all, pointless. It's like if Axe Cop were written by a manic-depressive, whiny emo child.
...Oh, wait.
Worst of all, there is no theme or message to be found, anywhere. It can't be "It Hurts to Be a Superhero," because Watchmen already did that, and better. It can't be "Blessed Are the Meek" because the most touching scene in the book, a flashback in which the lone powerless child is assured by her simian butler that she doesn't have to kill people to prove that she is strong, is ruined by her murdering him, horribly, in the present on the very next page.
This is not a comic. It is a man breaking his toys and getting off on it. Stay away.