By: Eric Wallace (writer), Gianluca Gugliotta (penciller), Wayne Faucher (inker), Mike Atiyeh (colorist)
The Story: I’m a comic book reviewer, not a quantum physicist!
The Review: In real life, a super-genius of the first degree would have no problems finding admirers and adulation anywhere he or she chooses to practice his or her intellect. In comics, a hyper-advanced intelligence is appreciable in theory, but by itself doesn’t always translate to the most entertaining stories. After all, the characters can only be as smart as their writers, and let’s face facts: fiction writers are hardly paragons of scholarship.
So what you ultimately end up having is a lot of nifty-sounding but improbable science, which this issue has in plenty. Don’t get me wrong; as a fan of Air Gear, I enjoy the frequent physics lessons mangaka, “Oh! Great” illustrates. But while he goes through the trouble of actually explaining the principles behind his fictional science, Wallace just has them blurted out, with little context, forcing you to do some frantic online research to grasp what he’s talking about.
Either that, or he simply expects everyone to have a working knowledge of “Bose-Einstein condensates” or “density inversion”. But it hardly matters. You can’t really feel suspense if you don’t know what the stakes are, and you can’t know what the stakes are if you don’t understand the physical limitations of the conflict. By making up science as he goes along to solve problems of made-up science in the first place, the writer fails to establish tension, which is the case here.
You have other fundamental problems with the script. The biggie is the number of clichés at work. Anyone with a smidgeon of sense knew, from the moment Michael went all Shining on a senator, that he would have to face the fallout from his fellow company men afterward. And of course you have some dirty dealing behind the scenes, involving rivals from Michael’s past and present. So far, none of these plotlines go beyond your usual corporate drama tropes.
Don’t look for much novelty in the superheroic material either. Brainstorm is essentially an analogue of Brainiac, only less pure in his quest for knowledge. He wants to “feed on a mass scale” the mental capacity of others, developing an “all-mind” that would gain him the attention he deserves. Basically, he’s your typical, egomaniacal mastermind with a hunger for power, but probably only the third best of his kind at most, considering the hero he’s going up against.
Prepare for some cringe-worthy dialogue. Most of the time, Wallace does fine, but every other page sports at least a couple lines that feel poached from the manual of cheesy writing: “Then creation will have a new, intellectual god to worship. Me.” (Sounds like something a Harvard grad said to me once.) “That creature may be our only. Hope. [sic]” “The mind games are over, space zombie.” “That sound tearing through me…”
On close-ups, like Michael in his med diagnostic chamber, Gugliotta produces some vibrant imagery, but pan out and it grows a bit sloppy. The only real point of discontent with the art is the figures of the characters, which often look as if their body mass keeps flowing up and down their bodies, appearing top-heavy at some points and bottom-heavy at others.
Conclusion: The issue never diverts from its formulaic appeal, and only superficially separates the titular hero from the rest of the pack. An underwhelming effort overall.
Grade: C
– Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: – You have to wonder how Mr. Terrific’s managed to keep his identity secret all this time. How many hyper-intelligent black men with “Fair Play” tattoos could there be running around? No one’s ever seen him with bare arms?
Grade
Conclusion