Written by Warren Ellis
Illustrated by Jon Davis-Hunt
Published by DC Comics
With Doomsday Clock missing from shelves, people’s enthusiasm for the series has truly waned a bit. The book is still good, but delays hurt the way the story is told.
So that leaves us with this title: A smart book that is original in the way Watchmen was original when it first came out.
Warren Ellis has teamed with Jon Davis-Hunt and is working his magic on somewhat forgotten characters here. (Alan Moore did the same thing with the Charlton characters). He has taken the old Wildstorm characters and gave them a great plot line and new universe to play in. It’s been exhilarating.
This issue focuses on John Lynch. John is on the run because his project, Thunderbook, and he needs to warn some of the people who were involved.
So, he decides to go across America to warn them! They are all hiding.
And they are not exactly human anymore.
The centerpiece scene for this issue is a confrontation between Lynch and Marc Slayton. (Slayton is actually the costumed character known as Backlash.) Ellis writes a tense scene here which Davis-Hunt makes extremely chilling. There’s an ominous sense of dread throughout the series but this scene in particular is the most powerful.
Backlash isn’t the character we remember and we get to see just how far gone he is. We get to see him use his powers and it’s a horror movie version of the character I remember. Kudos to Ellis and Davis-Hunt for upping the ante in this scene. It’s great.
We also get to see Henry Bendix be the evil Weatherman that he is in this issue. Even if he appears for only one scene as he does here, his presence is so strong that the reader doesn’t forget him. Davis-Hunt does wonders on his facial expressions. You can tell there’s a lot more going on in this characters head.
A well written and well drawn story? Sign me up. The only sad part of this book is that it’s 24 issues in this series. But man, am I going to savor each one.
RATING: A
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