mysteriousmre's Reviews (1.22k)

It's interesting re-reading this after watching the movie based on this book and comparing the two. This book's biggest shortcoming is still Billy Batson himself. I'm not opposed to a version of the character who's kinda bitter from bouncing around foster homes, but for the vast majority of the book he's completely unlikable. I think Geoff Johns was aiming to do a similar thing he did with Batman in Batman: Earth One, where the main character starts out in a more negative light but grows into the more idealistic version of the character readers are familiar with over time, but this book is too short to really pull that off without it feeling rushed. I still love the additions Johns has made to the lore with Black Adam and the Shazam family, but I don't think many people will enjoy this book for the reasons listed above and because the movie overall is just a much better product.

The book has a strong start...until you realize how silly it is that Gordon is being tried for the incident at the beginning of the book when there's no way his actions could have caused such a devastating loss. Carmine is a fun antagonist to bring back due to his history with Gotham, but I'm more than a little frustrated that he's not THE ultimate antagonist of the book. The art is great, but that's really the only positive thing I have to say.

The last time I looked at IDW Sonic I was definitely more of an apologist for the book than actual critic so I'll try to be better about that here: The titular story for the book isn't terribly interesting, but everything else after that is worth a read, especially if you've got nostalgia for Sonic games released in the early 2000s.

We get the big reveal of who's been guiding Eggman's forces in his absence (won't spoil it here, it's a great surprise), and we're introduced to another new character specifically made for this series named Whisper the Wolf. We don't learn much about her beyond the basics of her personality and powerset, but she easily sets herself apart from Sonic's louder teammates. I'm very interested to see her interact with the rest of the cast.

As always Ian does a great job capturing the voices of all the different characters a d I'm excited for the next volume.

5/10 An ok start for a series. I feel like lots of stuff happened in this volume, but it didn't have the punch it should have since we didn't spend a lot of time getting to know these characters and still don't know a lot by the end of this volume. Still interested in the next volume because i like Tynion's work, but it's much lower on my priorities list.

I'm very intrigued by this book. It's not great, but it has a lot of potential. Something I noticed right away is that Yang's characters have a very different voice compared to the rest of the writers at DC. Kenan Kong is attention seeking and full of himself and I HATE him, but that's intentional. It's very clear to me from this first volume that Yang is going the route Geoff Johns did in the Shazam book I read earlier this year (where the protagonist is an unlikable jerk who transforms into a hero over time). Kenan's story has a lot of potential to be better than Shazam's was 1) because that character arc is going to be paced out over more than just a few issues and 2) because part of Kenan's journey/job description is to learn more about Superman's powers, beliefs, and ideals and who's a better role model for being a decent human being than Superman??

Just like Kenan, the world and characters around him have potential, but haven't been fleshed out yet. Outside of Kenan's father, I never got a good grasp on what the other characters' personalities were beyond their reactions to Kenan's idiocy (It didn't really connect with me why the Chinese Wonder-Woman and Bat-Man became friends with Kenan by the end of the book). The book pays a good bit of lip service to the ideas of communism vs democracy, but doesn't fully delve into a major discussion on the topic (I imagine that's for another story since this origin story is juggling enough as is). It's a topic that isn't covered a lot and definitely not in the same context as this story so I'm interested to see what Yang has in store.

Regarding the art: I like it. Viktor Bogdanovic's pencils remind me a lot of Greg Capullo's style with the way he draws faces and bulky costumes (the fact that the colorist for Batman: Zero Year is the same guy coloring this book reminds me even more of Capullo). It works for me and the layout makes it a clean read.

I don't think this book will be for everyone, but if you want to read a very different DC book I think this might be worth a try. Only time will tell whether Kenan's character journey will have a payoff in the end.

"You're wearing a Baron Zemo costume! It's like if I dressed up in a nazi uniform and a Hitler moustache and then complained about not getting a good table at Chili's!"

This book continues to crack me up. There's something very refreshing about reading a book starring a legitimately villainous protagonist. I'm not exactly rooting for the main cast, since they're all mostly terrible people, but om interested to see how they dig themselves out of this hole. So far this title's lived up to its reputation.