I stumbled across this a few weeks ago at my local comic book store. I almost never take a flyer on random comics anymore, but I made a concession for this for a very simple reason -- Don Simpson. I am a huge Don Simpson fan, so much so that in the 90's and going forward I was nearly a completist on his work which has been kindled mostly in the Indie world but also has roots at DC and Eclipse and Image and elsewhere. Once upon a time Simpson was a major talent in the field, but in more recent years has chosen to withdraw to some degree. He put his characters, Megaton Man is the most most famous, online relatively early and once in a while will get something in print.
Now he's drawn this, or most of it. This is the fourth issue of a series which I thought had long ago withered away. War of the Independents (from Red Anvil Comics) sought to bring a higher profile of sorts to a mob of Indie characters and creators by slamming them all together into a Crisis-like event which sprawls across countless comic book universes and plays havoc with any attempt at what once was lovely dubbed "continuity". I don't care about that if the comic is fun, but alas this latest entry (I only ever got the first and third issues of this run because of E-Man and Captain Canuck) is an absolute mess.
Simpson's art is, as always, grand but the story is just a hapless series of micro-events which don't really appear to have any narrative momentum. It's just a huge bunch of characters doing some stuff for a period of time, and then the book stops. Simpson does get to play out his long-running notion that Megaton Man and The Tick are visually identical, but even that gets somewhat humdrum by the end. There's an idea that more of this series will come, but unless the artwork is worthy, I won't be sampling it. Given how long it is between installments, I likely won't remember I said that though.
Rip Off
No comments:
Post a Comment