Reviewer: Tim Sheridan
Story Title: With a Vengeance! Chapter One: Here Come the Maximums
Writer: Jeph Loeb
Penciler: Ed McGuiness
Inker: Dexter Vines
Letterer: Richard Starkings
Colorist: Lee Loughridge
Associate Editor: Tom Palmer Jr
Editor: Eddie Berganza
Publisher: DC Comics
I’ve been behind this book for a while. I’ve stuck with it even though I have not been nuts about the stories. But I think this is it. This has to be one of the worst comics I have read in a while.
I like Jeph Loeb. I think he is a great writer. I even liked Hush. He writes both a great Superman and a great Batman. But this just seems like lazy storytelling to me.
We start off the issue with a very thinly-veiled attack on the Avengers or Ultimates. It’s a waste of time to me. I would rather not have these Maximums. I have no desire to watch a DC vs Marvel feud in my comics. All I want are good stories.
And this seems like it may just be another “alternate universe” story. And that also bores me. It bored me in the last S/B arc, so I hope that isn’t the case here.
We also have an appearance from Bizarro and the brand new Batzarro. Now I know a lot of people like Bizarro, but I’m not a fan at all. He was used to great effect in the ’90s by Dan Jurgens and that Superman team, but Jeph Loeb has turned him into a joke. And he just doesn’t seem to fit. The dialogue that comes out of him is terribly difficult to understand, and it really slows down the momentum of the book.
Ed McGuiness is a great artist, and he has a wonderfully over-the-top style. All the art in the book is top notch, but I just don’t know if it fits as well as it could. It seems (other than the Bizarro stuff) to be a more serious story, and McGuiness has a style more suited to fun superheroics.
I may pick up another issue of this arc, hoping it gets better, but this first one really left a bad taste in my mouth.
