By Fred Van Lente & Greg Pak (writers), Rodney Buchemi (artist), Guillem Mari (colors)
The Story: The origin of Amadeus Cho’s awesome mental powers is revealed!
The Good: An offbeat title like Incredible Hercules has given Van Lente and Pak a wealth of opportunities to experiment with every aspect of their comic from its cover design to narrative structure, and the guys take full advantage of that freedom again in this issue. Written to read like an old pulp adventure as well as the narration to a role-playing game, the story was briskly paced and amusing from start to finish. I’ve dealt with enough insane gamemasters over the years to appreciate all the inside humor and nods to the RPG experience and have to compliment Pak and Van Lente for nailing all the beats and nuances dead on. Buchemi’s art is appropriately whimsical and does a good job conveying all of the more subtle character moments needed to successfully move the slower parts of the comic, and he is just as successful in making the RPG sequences every bit as exciting as an Indiana Jones movie. To be honest, I’d love to see Marvel have some fun and apply Buchemi’s versatile style to a range of their books; I think they’d pleasantly surprised with the results.
The Not So Good: My biggest concern this week was that no matter how good this issue might be, it still wouldn’t be enough to justify giving Cho full-length issues to tell his origin, and unfortunately I was right. At best Cho’s origin should have been a back-up feature to Hercules’ story, and not an entire comic unto itself. The plot doesn’t have the legs needed to stand on its own, and that in turn brings down this issue and makes it disappointingly forgettable. Furthermore, I was unable to shake off the impression that Pak and Van Lente were so into telling concurrent stories through their RPG narrative that they dropped the ball and forgot to consider the entertainment value of their story. I’m sorry, but spending $2.99 to watch a young Cho and his friend play Dungeons & Dragons is absolutely not my idea of a good time.
Conclusion: A well-crafted story does not always make for an entertaining one, especially when there’s barely enough story present to fill an entire comic. If you were to skip this comic and wait for the next issue, you wouldn’t be missing a thing and I can’t say I’d blame you.
Grade: C
-Tony Rakittke
Filed under: Marvel Comics, Reviews Tagged: | Amadeus Cho, Athena, Dr. Japanazi, Fred Van Lente, Greg Pak, Guillem Mari, Incredible Hercules #135, Incredible Hercules #135 review, Phythagoras Dupree, Rodney Buchemi, Tony Rakittke
Hey Mory,
Actually, yeah, it did go over my head! I was sick from chemotherapy when #133 came out and did not read it, so a lot of this was lost on me.
With that in mind, I’m alarmed at how glaringly obtuse Cho’s story is. And with due respect to you, because your summary of the issue was otherwise amazingly concise, you’re utterly insane for thinking it’s fitting that this issue should be so hard to understand.
NO comic should ever be hard to understand, least of all freaking Incredible Hercules. That’s not to say a comic can’t have layers of meaning and interpretation, but it’s the job of the writer(s) to convey what has happened before and what is currently happening in a manner that new and old readers alike can pick up and follow (which is where your emotions and progression of the story comes into play).
But if they can’t do that, (which is where I’d argue the narrative structure fails) then there is indeed a flaw that needs to be addressed.
When I review comics, I try to keep the potential new reader in my thoughts and how well a given comic can cater to them, since so many titles are written with the longtime reader in mind. Usually, ‘Hercules’ excels at offering stories that anyone can jump into and have fun with. These Cho stories were anything but, though.
With all due respect, I think the entire plot of this issue went over your head. It wasn’t an origin story, it wasn’t about young Cho and a friend, and it wasn’t really about a role-playing game. In point of fact, everything happening here is happening in the present. The last Cho-focused issue showed that in this place reality changes based on how it’s perceived, and Amadeus is being forced by an old man named Pythagoras Dupree to see reality as a role-playing game where Dupree is the GM, so that he’ll think that he has no real power over reality. I wonder if you actually read #133?
These two characters are supposed to be some of the smartest people in the world, so it’s actually fitting that their superhero conflict should be so hard to understand. But I don’t think that’s a flaw, because any reader (even myself) can understand the emotions and progression of the story, even if not the quantum-physics concepts behind it.