Dark forces move about within Monstertown, for good and evil.
Creative Staff:
Story: Steve Orlando
Art: Amancay Nahuelpan
Colors: Trish Mulvihill
Letterer: Tom Napolitano
What They Say:
Leviathan has dismantled S.H.A.D.E.-and that means Frankenstein is once again a free agent! Now he can set his sights on his former mentor, Melmoth, the one evil that got away. With bad things happening all across the Multiverse, this may be Frankenstein’s last shot at setting things right. Of course, Melmoth has his own agenda, and it’s going to take more than a lone monster to take him down. So Frankenstein heads to Gotham City in search of allies and recruits Killer Croc, Lady Clayface, Orca and vampire Andrew Bennett. But will even these dread creatures be enough to save humanity before the entire cosmos collapses in on itself?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With the events of Leviathan playing out at the same time as this six-issues series got underway, Steve Orlando got to play in one of the lesser used parts of Gotham with Monstertown. Orlando’s a really solid writer with some neat ideas though I tend to gravitate to his original works more than this. He’s paired up with Amancay Nahuelpan, which is my first time seeing their artwork, and it’s really ideally suited to something like this. When you can take these creatures of the dark and make them look as menacing as they do and to give this part of Gotham some real creep to it, I’m sold. And Nahuelpan does a great job of creating the right look and ambiance, especially thanks to Trish Mulvihill’s color design.
The premise is a little hard to sort through at times here because it’s spending its time introducing us to the six core “monsters” of the series that will come together to deal with Melmoth, a dark vampire from out of space that’s looking to “rescue” the multiverse. It’s an interesting angle that’s teased just at the end but most of the focus is on theintroductions to both cast and city. And that works pretty well overall since most of these characters are not top tier ones and some are pretty little known. Killer Croc is the most well-known and he’s here in Gotham trying to do good after picking up a lot of skills serving in the Suicide Squad and surviving there, leaving him wanting to do right by people after serving his country. It’s a good angle to take with the conflicted character who is almost always judged by appeaerances.
The other big notable character is Andrew Bennt of I, Vampire fame who had a really good run before with a then up and coming team. He’s on the hunt to figure out what’s going on in the vampire world as there are those that don’t succumb to him, leading him to learn about Melmoth. We get some brief introductions to those like Lady Clayface and Orca that works well to give us the basics of their type. And a decent chunk is spent with Frankenstein, who is in a bad place after Leviathan dismantled and burned the S.H.A.D.E. organization to the ground. Having not read any of that, or any of Frankenstein since his New 52 introduction, it’s all lost on me but the core is there with his cold anger and desire to deal with the darkness of the world.
In Summary:
With this just being a six-issue run and part of the DC Universe service that I’m reading it on, it’s an easy one to keep up with over the next few months. I like the cast of characters and to see where they stand, some of them a decade since I last saw them, has its appeal. I’m primarily curious about the big picture that’s teased here and just wanting to see more of Killer Croc as he’s a character I’ve liked with the way he’s moved across the lines of being a villain. Orlando’s script is fairly busy as there’s a lot to introduce here and a lot of exposition style pieces to get things in place but it works well enough and will hopefully smooth out more as it progresses and the main event reveals itself. I like the curious cast of characters and getting to spend some time in Monstertown as well as Gotham is just where I like to see minor characters play within the DC world.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via DC Universe
Release Date: September 11th, 2019
MSRP: $3.99
