By: Tony Bedard (writer), Daniel HDR & Claude St. Aubin (pencillers), Scott Hana (inker), Rich & Tanya Horie (colorists)
The Story: Place your bets, folks—who’ll destroy the system first: a Starro invasion, or a rampage of Lobo clones?
The Review: By now, you should know the drill: with this title’s cancellation imminent, a step back to see where things went wrong can always be a valuable move. For R.E.B.E.L.S., its biggest downfall has been it doesn’t live up to the kind of title it claims to be. It’s a team title that spotlights only a couple characters and sidelines the rest, and it’s a cosmic title that seems less interested in traveling the stars and more interested in establishing a bureaucracy.
The first problem has been present and obvious in every issue since day one, and this one is no different. Things weren’t so bad when Dox was Bedard’s only pet character, but once he brought Lobo in, the rest of the cast got reduced to nearly cameo roles. Even with Dox under Starro control and Lobo distracted with fighting Starro’s henchmen, the rest of the team still only gets a couple pages total (cumulatively!) of panel time.
Instead of letting the other R.E.B.E.L.S. take more important parts in the story, Bedard fills the issue by fleshing out Lobo’s origins—and none too well, either. If you’re at all familiar with the baddest alien in the galaxy, you already knew he caused his own race’s genocide. It’s not as if Bedard brought much depth to that grim event: Lobo was different; his people outcasted him; he took revenge, somehow (we don’t see how) bypassing their own regenerative resilience.
And this origin story ends up having no effect on the plot, as Starro the Conquerer backhands Smite from feeding it to the Lobo-clones (in hope they’ll avenge their ancestors’ deaths). It’s unsurprising though that Smite would try for such a desperate choice. Dox says it best this issue: “Only Lobo can beat Lobo.” It effectively sums up Lobo’s limitations as a character; he’s incapable of defeat, so you never feel danger when he’s on the job.
Not that there’s much danger to begin with. With Starro, the plot spells itself out fairly predictably: a bunch of starfish on people’s faces, mass hysteria/paranoia, the heroes find a way to break the connection, celebrations ensue. That leaves fairly little to look forward to as this arc wraps up, unless Bedard somehow brings a totally mind-blowing new twist at the eleventh hour, and there’s little hope of that—he can hardly keep track of the details he already has. Blackfire offers her services to Director Sardath in defeating Starro, yet several pages later Sardath has been Starro-ed (we never see how it happens) and she’s nowhere to be seen.
St. Aubin gets support this issue from Daniel HDR, who apes Aubin’s style so well you hardly a notice the differences—not necessarily a good thing as St. Aubin’s pencils have never been more than serviceable this whole series. His simplistic style just seems stiff, chunky, and incredibly plain, all of which don’t do much to sell a cosmic-action title whose script already underwhelms.
Conclusion: In the wave of DC titles up for cancellation, some seem undeserved, others sad but understandable, and others no-brainers. Unfortunately, R.E.B.E.L.S., for a lot of reasons, falls hard in the third category.
Grade: C-
– Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: – I suppose even for a race that’s achieved star travel, there’s no more satisfying way of scapegoating a member of your own race than traditional stoning.
– How would you rate the ridiculousness of having a whole race look like rejects from a KISS tribute band?
Grade
Conclusion