Comic Review: Mega Man #20

            It’s amazing to me that Mega Man has been around for nearly two years.  In this era of limited series and the “quick hook” on comics that aren’t performing to the high standards of yesteryear, it’s nice to see a comic that lasts.  Frankly, this book has a lot to offer in general.  My son and I have been reading it since issue one, and it has consistently been one of the better books on my pull list.  The ideas are fresh and the characterization is pretty spot on to what you would expect for the most part. 

Cover:

            I have to admit, this cover really doesn’t do anything for me.  It is a very general illustration, one that you might find on the first issue of the series.  While the story doesn’t really lend itself to a narrative cover (more on that in a moment), you’ve got to give me something.  While the art is technically good, and the coloring is excellent, it doesn’t really pull me in or provide anything outstanding for me to get excited about.

4/10 – A good illustration with excellent coloring makes for a ho-hum cover when it lacks dynamism or even the slight element of story.

Story:

            First of all, each issue of Mega Man comes with a “previously in” page that usually provides a decent recap to get you geared up for the current issue.  This one gives you a recap of the previous nineteen issues though, so it really doesn’t help in terms of clarifying anything for the reader. 

           

            The whole premise of the story is that Mega Man gets time shifted to various points in his timeline, past and future.  It is meant to obviously be confusing for the blue bomber, but it also incredibly confusing for the reader as well.  The idea is that we jump around as Mega Man does, but by doing that, and crafting a story where practically every page is in a different time period, I found myself as lost and confused as our titular character.  I understand the reason for doing it, it gave us a glimpse of things to come in the book in a more interesting way than simply telling us.  This is kind of the Destiny’s diaries trick that the Claremont-era X-Men were mired in, just a lot more straightforward.  Unfortunately, by taking away that air of mystery and prophecy that we saw in those old X-Men comics, it looked like writer Ian Flynn just went down a checklist of future story ideas he had and took a snippet from each.  Unfortunately he didn’t linger on any enough to make too much of an impact in terms of piquing my interest for any individual storyline right away.  It will be interesting to see how long it takes for Flynn to implement those story ideas into the book itself, but I am not “chomping at the bit” for any storyline in particular.

5/10 – Flynn tried something different and it didn’t really work out too well.  There is no harm in trying it, but I think the issue is that he tried to fit too much into a 22 page comic. 

Art:

            Let’s get this out of the way first; I dislike the Manga style.  I understand that it is basically a “house style” when it comes to Mega Man, and he would not be the same drawn in a more Western style, but I do not find it as aesthetically pleasing as most do. 

            That being said, I knew what I was getting into when I started reading the book, and it is a style that is incredibly kid friendly so that works out well for its target audience.  The backgrounds are in abundance on many pages (however the overuse of speed lines can be a little grating) and the artwork is incredibly clean.  This helps the colorist (Matt Herms) to really embellish with the color, doing a great job of painting as opposed to just filling in color.  On a book that is so cartoony, this is a great touch. 

            The artwork by Ryan Jampole (pencils) and Gary Martin (inks) does suffer a bit because of the nature of the story itself.  If there wasn’t so much going on, and the necessity to have each scene completed on a page, it would probably make things clearer.  Unfortunately the amount of things going on on each page, coupled with the fact that the lettering is larger than a standard comic book, makes for a jumbled mess on some pages.  

So...Many...Speedlines...

This actually looks like a cool premise, but in the bottom right panel, why does it look like they are cheering Mega Man when he is obviously sitting right next to Dr. Light?

This is an epidemic in this book.  The text balloons are rarely, if ever, contained to the panel they go to.  It isn't a terrible thing, but can add to the jumbled and sometimes confusing nature that this comic falls prey to.

5/10 – The artwork is clean and the coloring is excellent, but the art suffers from a script that tries to pack in too much.

Overall: 4/10 – This is probably the worst issue of the series, so not really a good jumping on point for new readers.  That being said, it is still better than many of the other comics that are currently out there, especially if you have kids.