Damage smash!
Creative Staff:
Story: Robert Venditti, Tony Daniel
Art: Tony Daniel, Danny Miki
Colors: Tomeu Morey
Letterer: Tom Napolitano
What They Say:
Ethan “Elvis” Avery just wanted to serve his country. Instead, he’s been changed into a monster! Tasked as the government’s own living, breathing, ticking time bomb, Ethan retains no control when the monster takes over. Cheaper than a nuclear warhead and twice as effective, Ethan fights to rein in the damage he unleashes when the beast inside him springs free for one hour a day. With everyone around him in danger, Ethan struggles to contain the DAMAGE he inflicts on the DC Universe
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
When DC Comics got their Rebirth plans underway I was definitely excited and the payoff has largely been strong as it’s worked through a range of ideas. I got more excited when the “new age of heroes” idea was brought out because new characters are a necessity in any shared universe and bringing some strong creators in to do just that with their own books has me ready to try out each of them. I’ve long enjoyed Tony Daniel’s work with the art, a bit more mixed on writing, and Robert Venditti has done some big and fun projects. That made Damage an easy book to check out and see what they’d do and it doesn’t disappoint in feeling big, loud, and kind of nuts even if it does feel like a brick of a character stumbling through everything.
The big problem for me is that Damage commits the mortal sin from the start as it’s picking up from elsewhere with what’s going on, spinning out of events from the Dark Nights: Metal series that I’m not reading. The premise is certainly simple as we know that military man Ethan has been transformed into this giant creature (Hulk allusions abound) and it lasts for an hour before he returns to normal and then requires twenty-three hours before he can change again, at least going by the narration here. That’s certainly some interesting restrictions to place on the character that I suspect will get reworked along the way as Ethan gets more familiar with what he is. With the creature that will be called Damage out there on the loose and Ethan inside trying to keep him from going too crazy, the book is filled with lots and lots of action as the forces that are responsible for him in the military are trying to get him back before they lose track of him post-transformation in Atlanta.
Naturally, something like this is going to attract the attention of others and the nod of Waller and her Suicide Squad toward the end shows how they’ll be used to advance everything and connect Damage to the larger world quickly. The book doesn’t give us much on our title character in either form outside of a few hints as it’s mostly skirted around the edges, which is fine to some degree but for me didn’t get enough of an emotional or story hook to really invest me in it. What does make it worthwhile in its opening installment is that Tony Daniel and Danny Miki’s artwork is just fantastic with Tomeu Morey’s color design. It has a really strong sense of flow, balanced well with the narration elements and ticking clock to give it a sense of urgency, and you can easily envision this as an opening pre-credits sequence of a film with what it does. Bang, throw the viewer in, begin advancing everything. It’s beautiful to look at in this form and it does remind you that DC really doesn’t have a character like this to work with.
In Summary:
Damage has a lot of potential and I have no doubts that the team here will be able to capitalize on it. The problem is that I don’t think they did enough in the first issue to make you eager for the second issue unless you’re just big into the artwork. For me, I’m of split mind based on this installment whether to wait for a trade of the first issue or try the book a bit more. The bit more has two factors to it in that it did not get my to hit the subscribe button so that I’d just get it automatically, but it did get me to preorder the second issue because it is priced at $2.99 and that’s a buy-in price to try something a little longer if I think it has potential. I have faith in the creative team and want to support this New Age of Heroes initiative but this just needed more.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: January 17th, 2018
MSRP: $2.99
