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Sidra gave me this comic, calling it her revenge
for my giving her Kiss Me Comix's books. That let me
know in advance what I was in for . . .
The cover shows a big blacked masked head in the
background, there is a woman flying through the
air, holding a chopped off head and a naked
headless body behind her. There is also some
skyscrapers behind her and a gold chain/cross.
There is also a URL at the bottom, but it's a
Webjump URL. That, on it's own, let's me know this
publisher is under financed if they couldn't be
bothered buying a domain name and some space to
host it.
Inside cover has a description of who all the
characters are and the credits. First page is a
bunch of text on a photoshopped picture of a city,
with a moon in the sky and a lighting bolt coming
down. At the bottom is an indication that you
should have read issue #0 to understand the story
so far.
To give you an idea of the writing here is an
example:
Okay, so I'm on patrol right, just like the
super-heroes in the comics, and there's this flash
of lighting and a loud boom. So I go check it out
to see if anybody was hurt of anything. I find
four people curled up in a fetal position on the
sidewalk. So I'm like "whoa". I go in for a closer
look. It's two guys and two chicks and I get this
real bad sense of an evil presence. Suddenly they
start to morph and I knew that was going to be
bad.
Okay, so this chick, she'd be real fine if she
wasn't a demon and all, says "We knew you'd come.
You've been a big problem up here. We've been sent
to feast on your flesh."
So if this book is intentionally bad to be funny,
they're off to a great start.
By page 3 it becomes clear this is a Christian
superhero comic book. The Ultimate Man is a big
African American with a giant cross necklace that
swings around as he fights. He also looks nothing
like any of the characters on the cover. From
here, we get a 12 page fight. Next we are
introduced to a crack whore who owes her pimp a
lot of money. She has a friend who is a hooker that gives
her lectures about using drugs, to no avail. She
also prays to God until somebody tells her she
should be working instead. She runs into a
familiar john who brags about money to blow and
his wife is out of town. She jumps on his motorcycle
and they take off.
Next we see Reaction in his civilian guise (or I'm
assuming so, there is no indication) and a female
friend who just shows up at his place. She's drunk
and wants to screw. Reaction, though, is a pure man
and instead tells her the sleep on the couch and
gives her a lecture about drinking and driving and
screwing up her life.
At the end we run into the john from before, he's
died and a female demon is taking him to hell
because he screws around on his wife.
At the end we get a page of text from the creator
Vinson Watson. He talks about the troubles he had
in getting artists to complete his book and having
to draw it himself. He makes several references to
Satan putting obstacles before him and God helping
him out because he had faith in him. After that
we get a lengthy interview with the creator, a
non-letters page and the back inside cover is an
ad for #2.
The dialogue is very direct and you can tell one
person wrote it. I am reminded of Independence
Day.
Regarding the art, there is very little change in
the perspective, the artists "camera" is aimed at
the middle of their bodies, or head shots that's
in the middle of their face. There is some Gil
Kane influence here. The figures are very basic
looking and when the artists does try to add some
detail, it doesn't look right. The panel flow is
easy to follow. There are 7 splash pages and many
pages with 3 panels or less. The majority of the
characters in here are women, and what's supposed
to be good looking ones, at that. So while I have
seen worse art, this definitely falls into the
realm of amateur art. There is a glaring technical
boo-boo with one word balloon overlapping another
one and it's clear it's all supposed to be the
same one.
I'm giving this comic a 1 out of 5 stars, the 1
being for those that like really bad comics.
Regards,
Jamie Coville
2004-10-25
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