As my Dad once said, "City boy gets slickered again."DC must know that there are certain characters I'll follow no matter where they appear. The Doom Patrol, Adam Strange, Metal Men, Metamorpho and the Challengers of the Unknown. So I was tickled to see the cover of DC Universe Presents with an updated version of the Challs.
They even threw in artwork by Jerry Ordway, one of my favorite artists, and a cover by another fave, Ryan Sook.
Unfortunately, they forgot to include the Challengers.
Wait, that's not entirely fair - they're in there. Rocky, Ace, Red and Prof are in the plane that crashes at the beginning of the book - but they're nothing more than supporting characters here.
The focus is on June Robbins, who is the producer for a TV reality show called "Challengers." She's leading a planeload of second-banana celebrities to a site in the Himalayan Mountains when it all goes south.
What follows is a strange, dream-like series of events, which is followed by an encounter with a monster (but not the one on the cover - that scene happens nowhere in this comic) and more mysteries.
The story by Dan Didio and Ordway isn't bad, it's just... confusing. I understand updating the Challs for a modern audience, but this doesn't contain any of the elements of camraderie or humor or adventure - it's more like "Lost" in the mountains.
It might still work out, and I'll buy the next issue at least to see if they can make sense of it all - but so far, this doesn't feel at all like the Challengers I know and love.
Hopefully they'll turn up next issue, and I won't feel like I got snookered.
Grade: B-
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4 comments:
It's written by Didio... you've been snookered.
This sounds, meh.
You sound a lot like me with your love for those old DC characters. I didn't pick this up, though I was tempted. You say the story's not bad, just confusing. To me, confusing equals bad.
Anon, that's the old "I like the artist but I'm not so sure about the writer" syndrome. Sometimes I take a chance and regret it later.
Tom, "meh" is right on target.
Dwayne, it's confusing so far. It's possible that future issues will clear things up - or make them more confusing. If I awarded an "I" for incomplete, that's what this issue would have earned. Maybe I should...
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