Unbeatable, Volume 2 – Review

By: Matthias Wolf (writer), Carlos E. Gomez (artist), Teodoro Gonzalez, Bob Pedroza, Shipeng Lee, Simon Bork (colorists)

The Story: So basically Hell is a fire-stormed, wretched pit of beast-ridden filth and death—that doesn’t mean it can’t have some perks.

The Review: The last volume of Unbeatable set up a storyline that was young and exuberant, but lacked much in the way of content.  In fact, it didn’t even seem as if Wolf had a very firm grasp on what kind of story he wanted, as it essentially went from a psycho-thriller to a dark fantasy on the turn of a dime.  Such changes aren’t necessarily deal-breakers—stories are meant to evolve—but they depend on the writer’s adaptability and execution to succeed.

Wolf certainly has no problems in the flexibility department; having gone for this Norse myth spin, he has pretty much stayed true to leading Dale on this more spiritual-cosmic path.  But it becomes painfully clear reading through the volume that committed as Wolf is to this premise, he’s not sure what he wants to do with it.

Now that Dale’s an immortal guard (whose very nature makes him “unbeatable”) it takes quite an effort to pose a challenge for him.  Loki shooting him, thereby sending him to Hell, seems like a ploy to put Dale someplace where he can actually struggle, but you don’t get the sense there’s any real reason he’s there.  In an entire volume of material, not once do you get a hint of what Loki’s up to—nor do you see him again, actually—so the whole deal just seems random.

In fact, almost everything feels like Wolf throwing ideas into the soup to see if he’ll wind up with something substantial.  You have Dale’s nine buxom, clearly non-elderly, assassin grandmothers, who show up in Hell just to tell him to seek out the shape-shifting Lizard King (a figure whose allure and vagueness rivals Alias’ Mueller device) for help escaping, only he and Thor decide to booze it up at a demonic bar/fight club for months instead.

Unbeatable Volume 1 – Review

By: Matthias Wolf (writer), Carlos Gomez (artist), Simon Bork & Teodoro Gonzalez (colorists)

The Story: He’s met Joan of Arc, Achilles, William Tell…and they all want to kill him.  He may not be a people person.

The Review: The graphic novel presents a very different reading format than your typical episodic comic book.  It invites a longer investment of time and attention, so you come in expecting more substantial and fully-realized storylines.  Unlike monthlies, which can get away with just immersing you in the moment by gripping drama one issue and wild action the next, graphic novels have to balance all these things throughout.

Unbeatable succeeds on this point—somewhat.  The entire first volume works essentially as a prelude, a very long setup to protagonist Heimen Dale’s true, mythic role.  This probably wouldn’t have worked very well read on an issue by issue basis: the early parts of the story move fairly slowly and even when the pace jacks into high-gear, you still end up with a very limited sense of how this world works, which, at an estimated 150 pages, feels too little.

At least when run together, pacing becomes less of an issue.  The straightforward narration allows for quick reading through the chatty, innocent period of Dale’s life.  But once you get to the real juicy parts of the story, you start to realize how unchallenging the plot really is.  There’s a certain repetitiveness to Wolf’s storytelling and to the way the novel’s different sequences work, so it’s a cinch to predict the next twist and what the aftermath will be.

It doesn’t help that nothing seen so far strikes you as outstandingly new.  The series’ primo concept—living through one’s many deaths to overcome pain and become a weapon of war—comes across interesting, but not mind-blowing.  There is also a lot of material, which feel poached from other works: the weakling turned invincible, the pure, teenage romance, the lost father, the fine line between the supernatural and insanity.