Algon, take me away!
Creative Staff:
Story: Jeff Lemire
Art: Joe Bennett, Sandra Hope, Matt Santorelli
Colors: Nathan Fairbairn
Letterer: Tom Napolitano
What They Say:
No one escapes Element World! The Terrifics find themselves out of their, uh, element in a battle to save a town turned into elemental monsters. With Metamorpho and Mr. Terrific out of commission, Phantom Girl battles the Kingdom of Gas (insert joke here), while Plastic Man tries to survive the Domain of Rock by turning it up to 11. All this, and the source of the Terrifics’ terrible tragedies has one more masterstroke: Tom Strong must die!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Terrifics continues to be a series that each issue has me close to dropping the subscription for and just waiting for any eventual trades that are produced. I’m a big fan of Jeff Lemire’s work in general but continue to find that he shines more outside of the established works and more with his originals. What keeps me here is his writing, because it is fun, and the characters assembled for this team. What makes it frustrating is the continually changing art teams, not the art itself, and the general sense that there isn’t much of a story here yet. It’s a lot of sound and fury where I’m waiting for the meat of the tale to start to show and it’s frustrating with how little we get in this area or in really making the characters come together well as a group.
The first half of this book is where I was closest to hitting the unsubscribe button simply because of the layout idea behind it. With it done as a four-panel piece with each character in their own panel telling their story in the various element lands that they were thrown in, it was just a reading nightmare that felt like it was going to give me a headache if it was like that throughout it. They all do come together and it turns into larger and more varied layouts from there, but the individual arcs within each just can’t sustain and you can’t just read one block through and the come back for the next. They tie into each other just enough to be problematic and it’s just a very unappealing way to read.
It does all come back to the group dealing with Algon as Rex isn’t capable ot dealing with him by himself just because of the breadth of Algon’s experience. Linnya’s able to help more since she can now control her phasing strength and there’s a kind of forged bond with the group. Unfortunately, as it progresses, things go horribly wrong in trying to eliminate the elemental aspect of what’s happening as Rex gets caught up in it and we get the sudden arrival of the real Big Bad in Dr. Dread, who is the one behind the Tom Strong storyline apparently – a piece of information that’s been touched upon lightly since he was brought into focus. As I’ve seen from Lemire’s other works, I know this will all tie together but it just all seems so haphazard and disconnected to the point of being frustrating instead of engaging.
In Summary:
I hate that I kind of feel like a sucker with this book. I want to see what the Tom Strong stuff is about as it feels like a shade of Black Hammer in a way with what’s presented here. I want to see Rex back to normal for a bit and how he handles it and what will get him back to his other “normal” mode and how that’ll impact him. But I also want to have less action and more story material alongside some good character material to really grow this. And, admittedly, I’d like a stable art team as it feels like we’ve had too many for a book that’s only six issues into its run.
Grade: C
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: July 25th, 2018
MSRP: $2.99
