My Greatest Adventure #4 – Review

By: Too many to list—check out the review.

The Story: Robotman enters a race!  Garbage Man vs. Dinosaur!  Tanga breaks up with Za!

The Review: I don’t know why it took me this long to realize it, but it occurred to me today that one of the biggest disadvantages of a multi-feature series is how vulnerable it is to inconsistency.  With most ongoings, if you get a stinker of an issue, you can always hope the next one will make up for it, or drop it entirely if things don’t improve.  If you have a title with some features you like and others you don’t, you get mixed feelings whether you keep reading or ditch it.

If “Robotman” was a solo ongoing, I’d probably stick it out to see if it gets any better.  Early parts of the story were delightful when Matt Kindt stuck to pure, old-timey sci-fi creativity.  This chapter still has some of that to some degree, like Cliff baiting the nanite-infected island animals so he can consume their organic parts to repair himself (you have to love that Scott Kolins draws Cliff’s nano-anti-bodies as microscopic, chibi versions of himself).  But as soon as you get into more dramatic territory, your interest wanes.  Though we finally get to see the infamous racecar incident Cliff’s mentioned all this time, there’s disappointingly little conspiracy or complexity to it, being more like one of those tragic consequences of scientific risk.  Besides, it’s hard (especially for a prude like me) to feel all that sympathetic, when Cliff’s own risk-seeking behavior lands him in those circumstances in the first place.

With “Garbage Man,” this is a feature I’d have dropped a few issues back had it been its own series.  Aaron Lopresti has been splitting his time between two plotlines (G. Man’s ongoing vendetta against Titan, and his regular encounters with random monsters), which thins out both in a ten-paged chapter.  Here, he focuses mostly on the crazy happenings in the sewer, and the story’s much improved for it, but it still feels like it’s meandering, looking for the big twist to make it worthwhile.  But which twist is that supposed to be?  Certainly not G. Man’s takedown of a sewer dinosaur, nor Samantha’s penitent return to him, nor the revelation that Dr. Clive (from way back in Weird Worlds #1) might be responsible for the homeless man whose dreams bring impossible creatures to life.  At least it all looks great, albeit a tad cutesy, with Lopresti and Matt Ryan’s detailed figures and John Kalisz’s bright colors.

My Greatest Adventure #3 – Review

By: Too many to list—check out the review.

The Story: Robotman in the jungle!  Garbage Man meets Batman!  Tanga flies with whales!

The Review: Back in my creative writing days, I had a professor (shout-out to Ron Carlson) who would talk to us about the hump of fiction known as the “Big Fat Middle,” the long stretch of stuff between the beginning and the end, the dreaded second act.  Here is where the merits of a story rises to the top or hits rock bottom, where a writer has to maintain your interest as his plot builds and finds itself.  Needless to say, many otherwise fine stories fall to the Big Fat Middle.

So it goes with “Robotman.”  Matt Kindt did a good job setting up a Silver Agey version of the mechanical man, putting Cliff’s technological capabilities to creative use (less so here, as Cliff simply burns his way through the mecha-snake’s gullet).  But this installment mostly treads ground we’ve covered before—Robotman’s regenerative abilities, Maddy’s guilt (of what, we still don’t know), the mutating nanites—and there isn’t quite enough action to make up for the lack of new information.  At least Scott Kolins continues to deliver a perky, charming-looking feature, and Mike Atiyeh employs a stunning spectrum of colors for all the nanite-infected creatures in the story, from silver-red geckos to sapphire blue butterflies to neon purple-green-yellow lava monsters—yes, I did say nanite-infected lava monster.  It’s pretty neat.

Aaron Lopresti already draws Batman over on Justice League International, but now he gets to write the Dark Knight too.  For the most part, he does a fine job.  His Batman is a to-the-point, tough-talking guy, although so generic you can probably have the same dialogue come out of any cop’s mouth: “You can talk.  Good.  Stay down.  I have some questions I want answered.”  It seems his only service to the story is to act as investigator, so I don’t know if his use in this story is worth his distracting presence.  Then again, without him, you basically have a cut-and-dry business drama (“I want this trail dead and buried.  Permanently.”) and some random monster-versus-monster action.  Still, a dinosaur in the sewer can be pretty good times, and Lopresti delivers a good-looking feature, well serviced by Matt Ryan’s inks and John Kalisz’s colors.

My Greatest Adventure #1 – Review

By: Too many to list—check out the review.

The Story: Robotman versus zombies!  Garbage Man finds religion!  Tanga stands up for virtue!

The Review: For my thoughts about the structure of this series, check out my review of Weird Worlds #1.  While still taken with the concept of a multiple-feature series, I don’t really support DC’s execution of it, especially where they limit it to a six-issue mini.  When you do the math, six issues, each sporting three features of relatively equal length, means each feature essentially produces a cumulative two issues at the end of six months.  What is this, S.H.I.E.L.D.?

The effects of this strict, finite length rears its head in subtle ways.  Take Matt Kindt’s “Robotman.”  While he manages to barrel the plot forward in good time, taking our hero, Cliff Steele, from in control to nearly disassembled in the span of ten pages, you can’t help feeling a lot of rush went into the writing.  Some scenes get cut off before they get a chance to build, like the intimate moment between Cliff and assistant Maddy Rouge (he literally takes off  in the middle of the conversation).  A couple times, we get facts thrown in so hastily, even Kindt can’t seem to keep them straight (is it Mrs. Turing’s brother or husband that’s missing?).  But all in all, you get great, Silver Agey fun: the robotic animals, Cliff’s HQ in the “Uncanny Valley,” and Cubans controlled by nanite rice.  Kolins’ strength definitely lies in retro sci-fi; his Robotman looks advanced, but still old-school bulky, and everything else has a clean, almost comic strip liveliness, with Atiyeh bringing more vibrant colors than he’s ever brought anywhere before.