By: Brian Wood (writer), Kristian Donaldson (art), Dave Stewart (colors), Jared K. Fletcher (letters)
The Story: The crew of the Kapital argues about whether to stick with their non-violent principals….
A few things: 1). Why should we care about The Massive? – I hate to be so negative on this title because I’ve really enjoyed everything else that Brian Wood has done. I do still expect this title to be good in the long run, but it isn’t a very good comic right now. The biggest problem is there is no central purpose to the story. I guess the purpose is to “find The Massive”, but we’ve been given no reason to care about this missing sister ship. We’re told that the crew of The Massive has many of our protagonists’ friends, but we’ve not been given any flashbacks showing why these unseen people are important. Why should we care about The Massive? And, even if it is assumed that we DO care, why should they keep looking? What indication is there that The Massive is out there and not sunk or raided by pirates? And they don’t even seem to be staying near where they lost The Massive. Hong Kong and Alaska are not close to each other.
I’m also not sure what the whole point of the Ninth Wave is. It sounds like before the catastrophe, they were kinda like a more assertive version of Greenpeace. So, is their mission now to ram whaling ships or what? I’m not sure what being “steward of the seas” really means because all they’ve done is talk about it. Let’s go on a mission and DO something! Show us what you DO!
2). Neat setting, strange characters. – I really DO like this world that Wood has constructed. It’s kinda a half-way apocalypse. Usually apocalypse stories are pretty hard core and humanity faces extinction. The world of The Massive is unique because although humanity has been kicked in the balls, they’re soldiering on. The sea level rose and they’ve figured out ways to carry on and still do things like pump gas into big ships that are powering around looking for their lost friends.
I also can’t connect with these characters at all. This world is a nasty place. There are pirates everywhere who have no compunctions about shooting. It just seems like height of lameness and irresponsibility for the leader of this brigade, Callum Israel, to stick to his “non-violence” pact and refuse to weapon up. This makes no sense unless he is the second coming of Gandhi. The other members of the crew aren’t much better right now. Mag seems like he’s supposed to be the muscle of the operation, but he’s got no muscle since Callum doesn’t like guns. The woman (Mary, right?) is kinda interesting because she’s at least gotten to play cat-and-mouse with pirates in one of Kapital’s tenders, but there still isn’t a lot of weight to her character.
3). Art isn’t working either. – I could probably overlook the slow-to-gel story if the art worked better. The problem is the character art is too clean….a little too digital-looking and a little too photo-traced. Apocalypse or not….these people are on a boat. Unless the boat in question is a luxury cruise ship, it’s kinda a grody existence: unshaven, messy hair, rumbled clothing, wafts of BO….. And the ships should be grimier: drips of water, the greasy/salty mess that gets EVERYWHERE aboard a ship, rust, corrosion, etc. To finish off my displeasure with the art, everything looks like someone was copying a photograph of the story and that isn’t really the best way to inject much action. These characters and ships just look frozen.
Conclusion: I’m not dropping this series. Brian Wood has told me too many entertaining and challenging stories for me not to give The Massive the benefit of the doubt. But this series isn’t working at all yet. No need to keep reviewing it until it turns the corner.
Grade: D+
– Dean Stell
Grade
Conclusion