Scattered across time, everyone is finding that life truly does suck.
What They Say:
Past, present and future continue to collide as the Next Men struggle to find a common thread-and each other. Plus, more on the startling discovery from the end of our first issue!
The Review:
The restart of Next Men in its first issue wasn’t a terribly smooth read as it tried to summarize a huge amount of information and it came across in a way that I think minimized just how much fun the series was. It ended up making it look a little too corny and contrived since it obviously removed an immense amount of material. The place that the original left off and this one picks up isn’t exactly the easiest to work with either since it creates a series of introductions for the characters where their lives are the furthest thing from normal. The first issue spent a lot of time in the present but this one takes us to the period where everyone was scattered about across time and trying to get a handle on what’s going on. Nobody gets sent to somewhere quiet and simple either as they’re cast into some of the more trying times in history for those locations.
Antonia has it pretty rough from the start as she’s cast back to the Civil War and deep in the South at that. Not realizing her situation, thinking she’s in the middle of a re-enactment, everything she does just makes her situation worse. Bad enough that she’s a black woman out on her own there, but with a short skirt, lots of attitude and a no crap approach to what she believes are people playing parts, she makes it even worse when she says she’s a federal agent and they brand her as a spy. She’s hard to overpower but they do manage it and that leads to a her getting quite the whipping before they try to figure out who her master is. Not that that is the real goal since some of the soldiers decide it’s best to just sell her off to a slaver trader for a good nights rest and a whore or two. The reality of the situation when it dawns on her isn’t easy since she has a certain view of how to get out of things but reality doesn’t exactly comply with it. There’s an interesting tie to her in the present that we see unfold that points to her ending as well which adds more curiosity to her particular landing place in time.
The other main story in the past that takes place here is that of Nathan who has stumbled into World War II afer going through the rift. He ends up landing in the midst of a group of American soldiers who realize he’s not German at least and end up holing up in a ruined house to recuperate for a bit. Nathan’s look with his eyes sets him apart and he ends up getting a short cut to his hair as well to remove the lice from his prehistoric days which makes him look all the more like a holocaust prisoner. So when the German’s catch up with him, it’s little surprise that he’s brought back to the nearest camp to be returned to the rather brutal doctor that appears to operate out of there. It’s quite the tease, but the fact that it’s someone that Nathan knows from the future time adds a real air of malevolence to an already disturbing scene.
Digital Notes:
This issue comes without any frills via the IDW Publishing app on the iPad. The issues I found with the first issue are still here with how the app works but there are page layout issues as well. One of the first double page spreads in Antonia’s story is actually split across two screens rather than being one that you can change the orientation on to view. It makes the flow of the story broken and difficult to understand until you realize how you have to manipulate it.
In Summary:
The two main stories in the past offer some interesting outlooks for Nathan and Antonia to deal with depending on how long they’re actually stuck back there. It seems like it could be considerable for Antonia with what we learn in the present time but things are less certain for Nathan. We do get a look at what happened to Jasmine as well, though her time with the Earl of Oxford is more a tease than anything else since it doesn’t go into much detail. Next Men still maintains the style that Byrne used back in the day and I continue to love his approach to illustration and pacing, but the book is having an obviously hard time getting going considering the history behind it. While I can get into it well enough having read all of that years ago and it’s all slowly coming back, I can’t imagine this being an interesting read for someone completely new to the series. They definitely needed to spend a couple side-issues doing a full on recap prior to this.
Grade: B-
Pubilshed By: IDW Publishing
Pages: 25
MSRP: 1.99
Distribution: IWD Publishing app via iPad
Writer: John Byrne
Artist: John Bryne
