Can you feel that? The Earth is shaking, if you believe Marvel's promotion for this limited series. There has been some double-down hyping of Generations and their other upcoming event, Marvel Legacy, so you would hope it delivers. This is to be the first in a run of one-shots where classic and new versions of Marvel characters interact with each other, for reasons that haven't really been made clear.
Well issue 1 delivers something, alright. This book felt like a crystallisation of all the complaints long-time Marvel fans have about the current state of their favourite comic book publisher: they don't feel like today's comics are being put together by people who know the characters, who don't (or won't) appreciate what these characters mean to readers, and who put the comics together in what would be considered an amateurish fashion by any other publisher.
I hate to say, after trying to give Marvel the benefit of the doubt, that this book is the best evidence the doubters have that they are right. Exhibit A:
After all the talking up of this series that Marvel did, this is page 1 of issue 1, and there's a typo. Really? This is Marvel, dammit. The House of Ideas. This book has an editor, not to mention several other people working on it, any one of whom could have spotted this and flagged it. This is the kind of thing you maybe overlook for indy comics being produced by hobbyists that are learning how to make comics as they go. This is not acceptable for a launch issue of the mother effing Hulk.
On top of that, I have NEVER heard Bruce described as 'The Banner Hulk'. I'm happy to be corrected, but Bruce is The Incredible Hulk, hence the need to call Cho The Totally Awesome Hulk to differentiate them, am I right? Again, for anyone who has read comics for more than a year, this feels like someone is working on your book that doesn't know the characters they are working with.
But anyway, you might feel this is semantics. Fair enough, how about the premise? The premise is, Amadeus Cho is just bounding around the desert one day, and runs into Bruce Banner, alive, Hulked out and being attacked by the army. They run from the army while talking about being Hulks.
...and that's it. No, really. No explanation for how this situation occurred, or why. I was half expecting Deadpool to pop out somewhere and explain this was some kind of fourth wall break to create a book-selling team-up. If it sounds like I am particularly laying into this comic, it's because I am; Marvel have been talking Generations up for weeks, promising to change the face of the comics industry. Instead, their opening salvo confirms a lot of fears that die-hard fans have been expressing for some time, which have been consistently ignored. It just feels like a lazy, poorly-put-together comic book, and I refuse to believe that could happen when they have put so much hype behind this.
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| We know how you feel, Amadeus |
This is a really serious misfire for Marvel. This absolutely needed to be better and the fact that it isn't suggests a detachment within the Big M from the large number of disillusioned fans that are putting down their books and looking elsewhere.
1 / 5
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