Everything Old is NEW Again!
I so got the chance to read NEWUNIVERSAL this week. I had read some of the old New Universe books when I was just getting in to comics. And I reread the ones I still have when I heard this was coming out. And you know what? They were crap. Total crap. Maybe they weren't all crap, but the ones I have are. So I was skeptical going in to NEWUNIVERSAL. Well, not that skeptical since it is Warren Ellis, but Salvador Larroca on the art did not assuage my fears in the least. And I gotta say, I was pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed the watered down tones that Larroca uses instead of the garishly bright colors in the X-Treme X-Men books I read. Which by the way, are not that bad if you skip over all of Claremont's synopsis captions. Can we get an editor for this guy? Sheesh.
Anywho, back to NEWUNIVERSAL. While this is obviously an Ellis book, it's also obviously a work-for-hire book. Ellis always brings his own style to something, but I guess I just really like his stuff better when it's his original idea. Such as Transmet, or Orbiter. But it does deliver the goods in the end. The idea is pretty simple, giant light in the sky, "The White Event" as they call it, and all over the world people start to discover they have superpowers. Straczynski probably would have been my pick to write it actually since he did very similar stuff in both Rising Stars and later in Supreme Power. But that's just splitting hairs. I am genuinely interested in character Justice this time around though. Again, since I didn't read how the original stuff started I don't know if his origin is the same or not. Hero cop shot in the head and waiting for his third surgery, the white event gives him the ability to know all a persons crimes just by looking at them. And some sort of ability to make things appear. Maybe. Still not sure on what happened there.
But all in all, a good read. I give it solid B+ for the first issue. One of my Picks of the Week for next week. NEWUNIVERSAL, written by Warren Ellis, with art by Salvador Larroca ships from Marvel this coming Wednesday, December 6th.
-Dan
posted by Star Clipper at Saturday, December 02, 2006
1 Comments:
Salvador LaRocca can be really, REALLY good. You ever check out his run on Namor? While the writing (by Bill Jemas and Andi Watson) was a little soap opera-y, the art was just stunning. What amazed me the most about that run is when I meet Sal at a con and complimented him on his work on that series, he said he hated it and was only doing it because it was required of him to do that book before he got whatever his next assignment was (I think X-Treme X-Men). Took me by surprise.
At any rate, the art in it is gorgeous and subtle, and he's one of the few artists I've ever seen to actually capture the whole underwater-ness of Atlantis.
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