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Storm Bringers is a superhero book where the entire cast is made up of
African Americans. The set up in the 1st issue is a bit too neat. There
are females that got supernatural powers and the focus is mainly on
them. There are male heroes too, but they are not yet fully introduced.
Only 1 we get to see talk at the end of issue 2. The male heroes are
more in the super spy / soldiers types. So the female heroes have
supernatural abilities and the male heroes are made. The first issue
follows a top level CIA guy as he survives 9/11 attack on the Towers and
there is some conspiracy theories involved. He looks up an old
psychologist friend who happens to be involved with the supernatural
women. The male is a teacher and can be used to train the women with
their new powers, the female being the shrink and can helped the screwed
up super soldiers.
I found the comics to be slow moving and the dialogue bad. You can tell
when reading it, that it came from the writers head. The characters don't
feel like characters in themselves, just constructs to tell a story the
writer has written. What they say and do is entirely devoted to moving
from one plot point to another. Considering only 2 of what appears to be
8 heroes are introduced at the end of issue 2, I'm wondering how he's
going to fit in everything else in the next 2 issues.
The artwork on the other hand is quite good or at least a lot better
than most indy books I've read. I looked up John Stinsman and seen he
has worked for other publishers since 1992. I wouldn't say it's quite
Marvel/DC level, but very close. What keeps it down is a couple of
things, one being the stiff storytelling flow between panels. I've not
seen the script so I don't know how much of that is him or the writer.
The other is a lack of diversity when it comes to drawing people.
Stinsman does a great job doing close up of faces, does an okay job of
half figures and gets a bit weaker when it comes to full figures. A
whole lot of his panels cut off at the ankles, which suggests an
aversion to drawing feet, but there are some panels with feet and he
does a decent job with them. There is some cheesecake in the 2nd issue
in particular as one of the female characters is a stripper, so we see
her in bra and panties. My biggest problem with the book art wise is the
very boring covers. I'm not sure who is responsible, but those covers do
nothing to sell the book, except to people specifically willing to buy
anything with African American characters in it.
Another odd thing I noticed with my copies is the 2nd issue is miscut,
with the top being about 1/8th wider than the first issue and shrinking
down to a 1/16th difference. The 2nd issue also appears not to have a
price on it anywhere. I'm hoping it was a preview edition just for San
Diego.
For overall entertainment value I have to give these books a 2 out of 5
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