Stan Lee’s The Traveler #1 – Review

By: Mark Waid (writer), Chad Hardin (art), Blond (colors), Ed Dukeshire (letters) and Dafna Pleban (editor)

The Story: A hero named the Traveler shows up in our time doing battle with some bad dudes named the Split Second Men.

What’s Good: I like the way Mark Waid writes the voice of the hero: The Traveler.  He gives him a voice that is simultaneously upbeat and weary with the world (“SIGH! I just fixed this mess.  Can’t you people keep the world straight without my help for 5 minutes?  Oh well…onward and upward!”).  It’s not a unique voice in the land of comic superheroes, but it isn’t one that is used all that much.  Traveler also has an interesting power set: He can manipulate time, so he can seemingly freeze things in mid-fall or move really fast.  But, he isn’t the Flash…he’s just warping time such that he is moving at a different frame rate than everyone around him.

There is also the mystery of who the Traveler is.  It is somewhat intriguing, especially because he has what appears to be the remnants of an ID patch on his chest with some key letters missing.  Clearly, who the Traveler is and why he is here will be explained in the future.  With minds like Stan Lee and Mark Waid behind the story, I have some faith that it’ll be a good explanation.

The art is like most Boom superhero books: serviceable.  There is nothing wrong with it, but it is pretty obvious that Boom is not trying to find the next JH Williams, III.  Or, if they do find him, he isn’t going to breakout on their watch.  This is just straightforward, very competent superhero art.