Creativity. Innovation. Total Chaos. Opening this book brings forth an explosion of ideas. It unleashes a story that unfolds at breakneck speed with layers of concepts and more characters that you can shake a bucket of sticks at. You have little idea of what is going on and who everybody is but the pace is so frenetic you have no time to stop and care.
Lovable slacker Max Faraday accidentally downloads something from the internet that gives him vast power. Forces infernal, divine, and terrestrial all want a piece of the action. This has a brilliant start but comes to a grinding halt when it must take on-board a bus load of characters from the rest of the Wildstorm Universe. It then picks up at the end with a sweet little love story. It’s like an inverted bell curve of excitement.
The art is positively hyperactive with garish colours, unusual borders, chaotic layouts, strange lettering, and digital effects. It is like watching kid’s cartoons on fast-forward. It is too much but in a spectacular way. There is a lot of talent here but it is overshadowed by the bombastic nature of it all.
This swings wildly between the best and worst aspects of comics but I am curious to read volume two and so it just scrapes in at a Thumbs Up!
230/135
Tomorrow: Divine Right: The Adventures of Max Faraday Book Two – Jim Lee