By: Marc Guggenheim & Tara Butters (writers), Ryan Bodenheim (artist), Mark Englert (colors), Dave Sharpe (letters) & Aubrey Sitterson (editor)
The Story: Guggenheim & Butters begin to explore what happens when the heroes “win”.
What’s Good: There are a couple of common questions in superhero questions, such as, “Why doesn’t Batman just kill those villains since they just bust out of Arkham and cause mayhem again?” or “Are heroes causing crime by being an attractive nuisance for criminals?” Halcyon seems to be touching on a tangent to those types of questions: What would the heroes do if there was no more crime? Would they decide to settle down or would some of them prove to be such adrenalin junkies that they would find a way to create some crime to fight?
This issue only begins to establish the world of Halcyon. The writers take us through introductions to the main heroes. This series of vignettes is nicely done as each character gets a box with their name and power. More comics need to use this technique because it is nice to know what these peoples’ names are. The heroes are all pretty recognizable archetypes from our Marvel/DC comics, so one wonders if this is a bit of misdirection such that we will be surprised when the “Captain America dude” does something that the Marvel Cap never would. We’ll see. But, as the stories unfold, the heroes come to the realization that all crime is coming to a stop. Not just super-powered crime, but also muggings, et al. Of course, this may or may not be scheme by the one super villain we meet in this issue. It is an enticing concept and it’ll be interesting to see where it goes.
The art works. It is serviceable and tells the story written by the writers without trying to show off and free lance. It isn’t without its flaws (an odd looking characters here and there, sparse backgrounds), but it perfectly fine for the story.
Lettering is one of those thankless tasks where it is usually only noticeable when it is done poorly, so we try to offer praise whenever possible. In this case Dave Shapre uses a really neat font for a scene in Pakistan that makes it 100% clear these folks are speaking a foreign language without resorting to: “<Drop your gun!!>”* * – Translated from the original Farsi
What’s Not So Good: It wasn’t a really exciting first issue because of how the story is laid out. Most of the issue is an introduction to characters and the central premise doesn’t become clear until the final pages. To each their own, but that is not my preferred way to pace a #1 issue. Overall the issue just needed a little more “zazz” (to use an old Simpsons joke). It isn’t bad in any way and the premise is interesting because you just kinda know this comic isn’t going to be about “happy world,” but you wanted it to grab you a little more than it did.
And– this is a pet peeve– why do we have to spend half of our introduction to the (seemingly) central superheroine seeing her in a post-coital scene with another hero? I hope it is in service to something they want to say in the story down the road because seeing her walking around with her arms and hair strategically covering the naughty bits comes off as fan-fiction.
Conclusion: An interesting concept that has a lot of promise, but the lack of excitement in this first issue placed it very much in the “average comics” category. Probably worth seeing how the next few issues are reviewed before jumping in.
Grade: C
– Dean Stell
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