By: Mark Waid (writer/creator), Horacio Domingues (pencils), Juan Castro & Michael Babinski (inks), Nolan Woodard (colors) & Ed Dukeshire (letters)
The Story: Max Damage and sidekick confront a group of white supremacists inspired by the Plutonian.
What’s Good: For a series that is supposed to be about Max Damage, it is interesting that the most interesting characters are the young women in his life. So it was welcome this month to see that Annie, the “new” Jailbait, gets her own nickname: Hardcase. Of course it makes the job of the lowly comics reviewer easier to not have to refer to new/old Jailbaits but it also helps to establish Annie as her own character. It also seems to settle whether Annie will be remaining as a character.
It is also a very positive sign that Waid has added the Plutonian’s former girlfriend, Alana Patel, to Max’s entourage. Waid has shown a few deft hand at dealing with emotionally damaged young women in this series, so this should be fertile ground for him to work in for future issues.
What’s Not So Good: As enjoyable as this series is, this issue was quite a step back. From a storytelling standpoint, the entire issue is rushed and all over the place. There is a lot of bouncing among various scenes from the story without good enough transitional art or storytelling to link these scenes. The whole thing just doesn’t make a lot of sense until the very end of the comic book.
Waid has earned a lot of trust from a storytelling standpoint, not just from his work on this series, but from telling hundreds of good comic stories over the years. That being said, this story revolving around the white-supremacists is not his most exciting. It is almost traditional super-hero fair and these Boom! titles have been delightful because they are going places that Marvel/DC wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole. Here’s hoping that Waid has a trick up his sleeve.
The art was also a little problematic in this issue. This title was just getting its feet under it from an artistic standpoint after starting out very rough for the first 5 issues or so. However, with the last several issues it was obvious that the Domingues/Castro/Dalhouse team was really starting to gel. So, it is disappointing to see a backward step in the art and then see the credits list a second inker and a new colorist. Hopefully either the old team will be back next issue or the new team will come together quickly.
Conclusion: Not the best effort from either a story or art standpoint. However, this series has been strong enough that it’ll take more than one mediocre issue to make one lose faith. Hopefully, the next issue will return to the themes that have made Incorruptible good and different.
Grade: C-
– Dean Stell