Review: Catalyst Comix #2

Sometimes, reboots of continuity can come up with something worth paying attention to. I really liked the first issue of this series, a relaunch of the Comic’s Greatest World imprint, and Catalyst Comix #2 (written by Joe Casey, illustrated by Dan McDaid, Ulises Farinas, and Paul Maybury) continues that trend.

With three different artists, I’d expect the art in this comic to be a little scattered or schizophrenic. They don’t all use the same art style across all the stories, but they’re all similar enough that it’s not jarring to go from one to another. They’re also all well suited to the story that they’re telling, which keeps the transitions smoother than they might be otherwise.

As I said in the previous review, these issues have multiple stories in them. Oddly, these all seem to be mostly serving the purpose of setting something up for the future, which is really strange for a second issue. They’re still the laid out the same, with Frank Wells taking the “A story”. To make the review easier, I’m going to look at the stories individually:

First off is Frank Wells. His story goes in a really weird direction, setting up… something. I’m not sure what they’re trying to set up, but it has me intrigued, so it’s really done its job. They manage to keep up a lot of the same tone from the previous issue. There’s a lot of the crazy, over the top narration, but it isn’t entirely the same. It’s possibly turning the tone down a bit from the overly ridiculous first issue, but that was what I loved about that issue. It’s not a problem quite yet, but I hope it stays at this level of ridiculous instead of toning it down as the series goes on.

Then we get to Grace and her story. I really don’t get what they’re doing, since it seems like there’s so much nothing happening. They’ve spent the last two issues trying to set something up without any sort of payoff. That could be done well, but there’s so little personality to everything that’s going on that I just want them to get to some actual story sometime soon. I’m somewhat dreading this becoming the A story, though that could be the point that they actually start doing the story properly, whatever that story ends up being once the endless setup has ended.

Then we have Agents of Change, which I prefer to call Wolfhunter and Elvis Warmaker because those are amazing names. This story succeeds at doing the same thing that Grace’s story was trying for, spending a lot of time trying to set up for an upcoming story. This one succeeds because there’s a lot of personality in the characters to carry it forward even though there’s a pretty thin plot. That doesn’t mean that there’s no plot, and what is there has some interesting, if a little cliché, potential. I don’t want to say more at risk of spoiling things, but they really open the door to a lot of possible directions to take the plot.

Again, I’m definitely going to recommend this issue. Even though most of the stories are doing more setup work than anything else, they’re still a lot of fun and promise some interesting stories in the future. I’m still not sure about Grace and her stories, but the other stories more than make up for its flaws, so unless you have something else you absolutely need $2.99 for, buy this comic.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) still makes the association between the title of this comic and an old Sega Genesis game. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts.