Comic Review: The Almighties #1

                Sam Johnson either really values my opinion or he’s a masochist.  You may remember Sam as the writer of Geek-Girl and Mr. Mash-up from the review I did a couple weeks ago.  While those comics were relatively well received, they were in no way pillars of creation, so I was a little surprised when I was contacted to review Johnson’s other book: The Almighties.  I am happy to give my feedback and to publicize his work in any way possible because there needs to be more people out there that are busting their ass to get noticed, and that aren’t afraid of a little constructive criticism to improve their craft.  That being said, let’s dive right in, but first, the official stuff:

The Almighties #1 is available in regular, Ltd. Variant, and Digital/Kindle editions at http://mikegagnon.wix.com/almighties

Cover:

                The cover, by Eleonora Kortsarz and Socrates Gucor is your pretty standard first issue team shot.  It shows the five man (well, three man, one woman, one werewolf) team posed like they are ready to go into battle, or at least ready in case a battle comes to them.  The quality of the illustration is fairly well done.  There could be a little more variation in the line weights to show depth and shadow, but all in all it’s not bad.  The characters all look different enough to be distinguished as different people (though the guy in the lower left has a decidedly “Liefeldian” mouth, which isn’t a great sign).  The helmet on the guy on the left looks like it was drawn on after figuring out what the rest of his head looked like, which is a great sign, and something you would think would be a standard practice (should be but isn’t always). 

I am not wild about how the werewolf is portrayed here.  The snout is so long that I thought it was initially a horse-type hybrid creature.  Once I knew what it was, I was a bit more accepting, but the design doesn’t scream werewolf to me.  Also, on the cover, the body hair is just represented as a series of lines.  While they are at least all going in logical directions, I would have rather seen less penwork here and instead have a nice solid outline of hair here, maybe utilizing the colorist more to provide the interior details of the body hair.  It’s just an idea, but one that would have been a bit less messy.  Right now, the hair looks almost like an afterthought which is a shame as the rest of the art on the cover is fairly well crafted.

                The one thing that perplexed me about the cover was what the guy on the lower left was holding.  We eventually learn that it’s a spit with gyro meat on it, but without knowing that going in, I had to try and guess (I never guessed spit with gyro meat).  Was it a bee-hive of some sort?  Mega Man’s arm cannon covered in feces?  I really wasn’t sure.  I realize that it’s an essential weapon of the character wielding it, but it just leads to confusion until we get a little backstory.  Something seems a bit off about the anatomy of the girl on the cover but she is covered up enough by other characters where anything that’s wrong is not readily apparent. 

7/10 – It’s a solid cover with decent coloring.  Some slight changes could have pushed it over the top but it definitely does the job of piquing my interest in the characters contained within.

Story:

                The story in Geek-Girl and Mr. Mash-up were the highlight of those books.  They were decently crafted tales that gave an idea that something larger was in the works without really spoonfeeding the reader the information.  Johnson and his co-writer (Mike Gagnon on the script) runs into trouble with this book though as he telegraphs a little too much and lacks any subtlety whatsoever.  I like the fact that he starts out in the “present” before travelling back in time to find out how we got there.  That’s a good technique and the fact that he uses it to show us the team assembled and in action before we travel back to learn who they are, while not entirely original, works incredibly well.  I was lost by the “Pimm’s” reference though, is that a brand of wine or something similar to Kool-Aid? 

                The inclusion of a drooling simpleton as the butler seemed a little ridiculous until the end, but even then it seemed unnecessary.  It feels like a lot of the book is full of unnecessary things and little tangents that feel like they didn’t need to be there.  This includes the revelation that Stefanos (the guy on the cover with the gyro meat) has to keep going to his restaurant to put the French fries on, even though “French fries” is apparently code for “meet with the president”.  Except it kind of doesn’t because then he says something to the president about his French fries burning.  My question is how does he get from outside his shop (where we see him dropped off) to the white house and back? 

We are not told the origin of everyone on the team in this issue, but we are given a peek into Ms. F and her life before superheroing, and it’s silly, almost as silly as her name which she says stands for “Ms. Free” or “Ms. Fun” because she’s a “swingin’ single” since her divorce from a controlling jerk husband.  This women’s empowerment that Johnson tries to force on us only goes as far as the first couple missions as she falls all over her teammate Maxi-Tron (which I can't read without thinking of a super-powered tampon), volunteering to help him check for testicular cancer.  Yup, that happened.  The whole exchange (which takes place over two missions) feels incredibly forced and if I was anyone else on that team I would have either quit or killed those two for talking like that.   

The fact that one of the groups that The Almighties are tracking down is called F.U.C.A.S. and they work with the television station that goes by the code name A.N.U.S. is just juvenile.  It feels like this comic is straddling the line between parody and legit superhero tale without taking the plunge to either side.  The Almighties need to go after the group F.U.C.A.S. (an animal rights group) because they blew up a building, killing an old man (who was apparently about to retire, which we learn in two of the most confusing panels in the comic).  We then cut back to the present and the action, which goes about a well as you would expect from a group of superheroes attacking a bunch of guys with ski-masks.  We also get our first mention of testicular cancer as Ms. F had a rabbit that died of testicular cancer.  The fact that this little nugget of information is divulged mid-punch is just silly. 

We are then transported immediately to their second assignment, a basement where apparently all of the aliens that have inhabited earth were gathering together for one night only to discuss their plans for world domination.  At this point, I was ready to call bullshit on the leader of this group.  It all seemed too dumb to be true and how these guys kept falling for it was sad.  What is even worse is the way Johnson tried to write the exchange between the black gangsters in the club.  I understand that he was trying to write a dialect, and probably make these guys seem like creeps so we didn’t mind if they got their asses kicked by the Almighties, but it seems unbelievable and honestly, a little offensive.  I don’t get offended easily, by anything, but these few pages had me feeling like I should apologize.  We do actually get to see The Almighties do some real fighting though, which is nice…until we get to the second exchange about testicular cancer where Maxi-tron turns to a puss because his grandfather had testicular cancer and Ms. F volunteers her services.  There had to have been a better way to manufacture a romance than this.  It seems cheap, creepy and wipes away any kid of girl-power good will that Johnson built up with his introduction of Ms. F. 

We are then transported to the third assignment that involves infiltrating a coffee shop that is surrounded by barbed wire and a large fence.  Sure seems like an evil mastermind compound to me right?  Not really.  It’s actually a totally legit coffee shop run by a bunch of black guys in the middle of a KKK-esque all white neighborhood.  Talk about not knowing your clientele.  The Almighties beat the tar out of these reputable business owners until a blonde-haired white guy parachutes in and tells everyone to “chillax” (I wish I was kidding about that).  President Obama then gets on the phone with Stefanos and tells him that the team has been doing the dirty work of some radical black person-hating bigot (because black people picked on him on the playground at school).  This surprises everyone because apparently everything that has been said was taken at face value, and no one suspected that this guy was full of shit.  Apparently all of the groups that they targeted were legit (even though the animal rights guys did kill someone in the explosion as stated - which is completely glossed over by the government by the way, and the “aliens” were clearly gangsters). 

After fighting this “evil mastermind’s” henchmen, (which includes a robot that looks like Hitler and the special ed guy that is injected with a serum turning him into a werewolf), the team enacts revenge on him by letting all of the black people he captured have their way with him.    

2/10 – There are way too many coincidences and unlikable characters here to make this a good story.  Everything that happens feels like it was thrown in to be convenient with no real forethought put into the story.  The characters are barely fleshed out and much of what is developed is just plain silly.

Art:

                There are three artists on this issue, Eleonora Kortsarz handles pages one through eleven, Pablo Zambrano handles pages twelve through twenty-two and D.C. White along with Zambrano handle pages twenty-three through twenty-eight.  You can definitely tell when we switch artists as the styles are considerably different.  The fact that the interiors are fully colored is nice, but it doesn’t necessarily do much to save the artwork from being unimpressive.  None of the artists go crazy with outlandish page designs, which is a huge bonus in my book.  They stuck to the basics and I think the book is better because of it. 

                That’s the thing, there is nothing truly “wrong” with the art.  It does lack a sense of dynamism though, even during the fight scenes where you would expect at least some level of that.  T here is an overabundance of mid-range camera shots, but they are broken up a bit here and there and we even  get some down-shots thrown in there.  The coloring is inconsistent as well.  I know, it’s done by two different people but I would hope that an editor would be able to catch that and at least ask for touch-ups.  In the beginning it is well done and serviceable, but as the artists change, the quality of the colors do as well. 

The fact that there are three jump-cuts in three panels makes this page uber confusing.  It's hard to blow something up and have us recognize it if we've never actually seen it whole (and no, writing lab in big blue letters as if that's all that survived the explosion does not help) 

This occurs over three separate battles, and just highlights how horrible the relationship between these two characters is.  Who talks like that?  It sounds like a transcipt from a porno.

Yup, the whitest guy in the room just said "Prez" Obama and "Chillax".  

And that's a werewolf and a Hitler robot because...of course it is

5/10 – It’s not the worst I have ever seen, by far, but it is closer to a fan-comic than a professional book.

Overall:  4/10 – If you want an Actuality Pres comic, I would still suggest picking up Geek-Girl.  The Almighties needs a lot of fine tuning before it is ready for public consumption in my opinion.  The fact that it came out before Geek-Girl does show me that Johnson has made significant strides as a writer and I am more interested in his new stuff.