Author: Jonathan Hickman
Publisher: Image Comics
Rating: WARTY!
Art work: Nick Dragotta.
Colors: Frank Martin.
Letters: Rus Wooton.
Errata:
Page numbers are absent – in part 6, fifth page, bottom left panel “…say their peace…” should be “…say their piece…”.
Four pages into where John Freeman visits his father, first panel, “…against all harm your people…” should be “…against all who harm your people…”.
I reviewed the very first comic in this series back in September of 2013. After that I never saw or heard of the comic until I found volumes two and three in the local library (bless that library!), so I thought I’d take it up again, and see what’s what. This series apparently has now run to fourteen volumes, but after reading these two, I'm not going to be reading any more.
This compendium starts out borrowing a lot from movies like Star Wars (for the council, the exotic council building, and the floating chair in the courtroom). It borrows from Star Trek (for the testing of the child, towards the end of this volume – compare with the testing of Spock). It borrows from the movie Wanted when it comes to an assassin (which is what the Texas Rangers are turned into here) taking a ridiculously long rifle shot to take out one of the main characters (or does he? You have to read the next volume to find out). It also borrows from the movie Red Planet, for the predatory quadruped with a light on its head, and from the movie Judge Dread for the law-enforcement/judge/jury/executioner after the courtroom scene.
The comic has lines like “When the time comes, I’ll kill you last” which really makes no sense, and there are errors in the text, such as when the judge says “…say their peace…” which should be “…say their piece…”. Another one I noticed was “…against all harm your people…” which should have been “…against all who harm your people…”. That aside, it was written well and it was drawn and colored well, too – to the same standard as volume one was, but the story simply wasn't anywhere near as interesting or as appealing.
There is, however, what felt like a bit of a disconnect between this volume and volume one. In saying that, understand that it’s been a long time since I read this! In the first volume, we had the story of the four horsemen, and the end of the world, told from the perspective of splintered USA consisting of 7 republics, and a rather inexplicable wild west skin laid over it notwithstanding the advanced technology. One of the four horsemen, Death, had an agenda which you might not have expected, and he was accompanied by two witches, a guy and a gal who were both built much more like the stereotypical comic book heroes, and relying heavily on native American stereotyping.
The story really didn’t appear to be going anywhere much, and wherever it was going, it sure wasn’t in much of a hurry to get there. It seems like the authors had suddenly become obsessed with dragging out the pain and torture, which in some regard can be said to fit the overall plot, but to read panel after panel of this stuff is asking too much without having some sort of solid pay-off for the effort.
