Reviewer: Jimmy Lin
Story Title: Earthfall
Written by: Keith Giffen
Penciled by: Mitch Breitweiser
Colored by: Brian Reber
Lettered by: Cory Petit
Editor: Andy Schmidt
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Kevin, why did you do this to me? Did I commit some heinous crime against you and your family? Did I blaspheme against your favorite continuity? Are you a Kyle Rayner devotee who found out that I love Hal with all the homoeroticism he deserves? No, no… hey wait? You’re a Hal fan? I didn’t know that. I *might* have given you something worse if I had known though.
As I’ve said before, I don’t read Marvel comics. I know a little about the major characters and pantheons but nothing about the minor guys. And after opening up Drax #1 and discovering a Lobo meets Hulk a la Charlie from Flowers for Algernon, I really have no desire to seek out anything else from Marvel. Y’see, Lobo is funny, Hulk is interesting, and Flowers for Algernon is a modern classic. Drax is none of these things.
I’d get into a plot summary, but I really don’t see the point. Okay, why not? You’re paying for the bandwidth. A couple of kids stumble upon Drax in a fistfight with a couple of other alien convicts after their transport crashes on earth. That’s it. That’s your plot summary. There’s nothing of story that’s really of interest. Nope, nada. Drax talks slow, ship blows up and crashes, there’s a fistfight, and a couple of “outcasts” stumble on the crash site. Yup. Uh-huh. Right.
Keith Giffen penned this POS, and considering his previous triumphs (among them co-creating Lobo), this was a real disappointment. There’s nothing interesting about any of the characters and at the end of issue 1, there’s no story worth following. I hope he cashed his check before this hit the shelves, because if I were an editor at Marvel, I’d be hollering for my money back.
Compounding the narrative problems (prime among them being a lack thereof) is the art. It’s murky, indistinct, and altogether unconvincing. I dunno if this Mitch Breitweiser fellow has done anything else, but if this is the best he can do, he’d better keep his day job. Bleh.
