Reviewer: Tim Stevens
Story Title: First Blood
Written by: Bruce Jones
Art by: Ben Oliver
Colored by: Carrie Strachan
Lettered by: Clem Robins
Editor: Alex Sinclair
Publisher: DC Comics
Here it is. The final Superstorm book. Vigilante. Pulling into the station about a year or so later than it was supposed to and with an entirely new creative team at the helm. So…is it any good?
Kinda. Mostly though, it’s a bit boring.
For those who don’t recall, DC has had several Vigilantes. The most well known of them is probably Adrian Chase (seen below, apparently taking someone out for the crime of a messy bedroom).
Adrian was something of a precursor to the Kate Spencer Manhunter: a crusading DA who takes the law into his own hands at night. His MO was still similar to Marvel’s Punisher, but this characteristic gave him a different personality than Frank Castle. Sadly, the guilt eventually overwhelmed Adrian and he killed himself.
At this juncture, the new Vigilante (seen below) is a virtual cipher.
He kills criminals like johns and molesters as Punisher and Adrian did before him. He is a man of few words and we only see him on panel once in the whole book. The crimes he (or she, I suppose) is stopping/judging are fairly generic so far, but the extremity with which he carries out his “verdicts” (especially in the case of the “john”) is certainly worth noting. It is impossible to tell if he’ll end up Punisher-lite or something else entirely.
That’s a good approach to a mystery, certainly, but there has to be other things in the book to hold the readers’ attention while you reveal the clues. This is where the team is falling down. The characters seem to all speak in the same glib tone (except the freelance photographer who likes to drop a little slang in every one in awhile, as when he calls another man, one whom he just met, “Boo.”) and are, as of now, paper thin. Yes, it is only the first issue, but that’s no excuse to have not put some proverbial meat on these characters bones.
The art, sadly, is little help in this regard. Oliver has a nice sense of shadow and his style certainly fits the tone that Jones is trying to strike. His redesign of the Vigilante gives the character a suitably spooky and alien look, nicely divorcing him from the more “normal” citizens that he is “protecting” from the criminal element. However, it lacks energy, dynamics, and atmosphere. The pages feel very static and the panels, for a book steeped in shadow, oddly empty. His facial work is also a bit disappointing.
