Review: Captain Midnight #2

I find it quite difficult to keep reviewing this series. I was hopeful at first that there would be something to make this not feel like Captain America (take a shot), but the more that it goes on, the less hope I have for that. Captain Midnight #2 (written by Joshua Williamson, illustrated by Fernando Dagnino) is making me regret the initial enthusiasm I had for the series, which I want to be good but just isn’t.

This issue starts off with Captain Midnight getting the back story to Fury Shark that we already knew. It’s not the greatest start to an issue – even his reaction to it adds nothing new to anything (pseudo-Captain America (take a shot) thinks that having a Nazi be a prominent figure in the United States is scandalous? You don’t say!), so we start off on a redundant foot already. I almost feel like it’s there to try and introduce the character to people who are just picking up the series in this issue, but that’s not a good enough excuse for it to be so clumsy. It’s a great idea if they pull it off without the clumsiness, since most comics don’t do enough to try and get new readers in without backtracking, but it’s still not well done.

The worst part is that they just end up seeming to copy Captain America (take a shot) in far too many ways. I understood it early on, when it worked as a way to get me into what the character is basically all about, but it’s starting to get ridiculous at this point. Displaced in time from World War II? Okay, sure, you can tell a different enough story from the same premise. He’s not just a soldier, but also somewhat of a technology expert? Interesting and different – they stretch it with him being able to work modern technology in minutes and being able to improve on it, but I can take that. His love interest from the war being an old woman now who still misses him? I’ll take that – unless you want her to have died and cut off story possibilities, you’ll have to do that. Have her remarkably similar looking granddaughter find and befriend him as some sort of government/military agent and hint towards starting some sort of relationship going that way? Take more than just a shot. They’ve gone past just trying to set up the premise – now is the time for you to show me what’s so different from him that I want to read this instead of Captain America, not continue to bring out all those similarities.

The art is, well, the art. I kind of had my expectations set high by the #0 issue, which while not having the most inventive art overall, had a visual gag that I absolutely loved. Somehow, the series has lost the sense of humor already (or it’s just the fact that neither of the artists for that issue continued on to the next issues), and I’m left to just look at the art itself. The thing that sticks out to me is Fury Shark, who is shown in a firefight wearing a leather bodysuit that, while obviously showing off her breasts, makes her stomach look like it was drawn by Rob Liefeld. Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration, but the costume looks like it was designed for a muscular man, then thinned down and had breasts added. Did I mention she had high heels as well? In the middle of a firefight? This is just confusing me at this point. It’s 20 years too late to try and bring back a character in the 1990s style, especially in a way this confusing. It’s not like bringing 1990s characters back in the current style — that’s working pretty well so far elsewhere.

I don’t recommend this issue, in case I left any doubt in your mind. I thought that there was potential back in the #0 issue, but it’s not lived up to it and doesn’t feel like it’s going to any time soon. There are better books out there to spend $2.99 on until and unless this one starts to live up to its potential. It’s not even a spectacular, interesting to tear apart failure – just a mediocre book that doesn’t do anything interesting. I might pick it up again in a while to see if it’s gotten better, but for now, I’m not even interested enough to keep reading for the time being.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) had fun tearing this issue apart, but unless it becomes a different kind of bad soon, there’s nothing left to say. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts.

Review: Captain Midnight #1

When I reviewed the #0 issue of this series, I was really looking for future potential. It’s the way I read and watch anything serialized – the beginning is usually rocky due to the creators trying to get a feel for the tone and the characters that they’re working with, so I’m really looking more for the promise than its current quality. Captain Midnight #1 (written by Joshua Williamson, illustrated by Fernando Dagnino is starting to lose me, but I’m willing to stick it out for a little while longer since I really want it to work.

Before we start, yes, I realize that Captain Midnight is a character that started in a radio series in the late ’30s. I didn’t know that going in to the #0 issue, so my reference to it seemingly being inspired by Captain America is completely backwards, but I know this now. I do think it’s helpful to look at this version on its own merits, so I’ll be mostly ignoring the previous incarnations for the sake of these reviews. That said, my biggest issue is that I’m not entirely sure what Captain Midnight’s character is. It feels like they’re relying on some shorthand to make him essentially “Captain America with Tony Stark’s brain”, but those archetypes don’t help me understand him past those surface details. I understand why people would respect him given his backstory, but what about him makes people really care? When the main character, the guy with his name on the book, is a complete cipher, it’s hard for me to connect with the character and the series. I still have hope for it, but when even the flashbacks don’t add much to his character, I’m a little worried that they’re going into this without a well-developed main character.

He’s also part of a weird dynamic that might make more sense if Midnight was better defined. Fury Shark is set up as the main antagonist to Captain Midnight, and they’re both set up as geniuses with a specialty in weapons. This is where I’m getting the Tony Stark vibe, as Midnight is seen disassembling and upgrading a modern fighter jet, despite being displaced from the 1940s. This could be a really good contrast between the two, something that was hinted at but not executed properly in Iron Man 2 (I’m trying not to constantly reference other superhero properties, but it’s kind of difficult not to), so if they could better develop Midnight and Fury Shark (I have to say, I love that name, though not quite as much as Wolfhunter and Elvis Warmaker), it’s a dynamic that could really make for some interesting stories.

I don’t have all that much to say about the art. There’s almost nothing different about it from the previous issue, so anything I could say here would just be a rehash of the previous. It doesn’t have the same visual sense of humor that the previous one, so it’s even a bit of a step back from the previous issue, but there’s really nothing new to comment on, though I really wish I had more to say here.

Overall, I’m a little back and forth on recommending this issue. I have hope that this series is going to get better, but the fact is that it still hasn’t really found its feet yet. I’m not going to recommend it based on this issue alone, but if the concept gets your attention, then it might be worth picking up. Otherwise, you might want to save your $2.99 until it becomes clearer if the comic is going to realize its full potential.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) is a staff writer for Red Shirt Crew, and has an odd difficulty coming up with anything to say in the end text for issues in this series. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more thoughts occasionally.

Review: Captain Midnight #0

Captain Midnight #0 (written by Joshua Williamson, illustrated by Victor Ibanez and Pere Perez) is very obviously a superhero book. Specifically, it feels heavily inspired by Captain America. These are not bad things, they’re just there and actually help you know what you’re getting into when starting the book. Despite the cynicism. That seems from that, it’s actually a fun, if occasionally disjointed, introduction to a world that can hopefully live up to its potential.

From the moment it starts, you’re dropped right into the middle of the story. They don’t stop to explain what is going on to the reader or the characters. A few people know what’s going on, while everyone else is just trying to catch up. There’s nothing resembling an origin story given except in small snippets, which is where its resemblance to Captain America actually helps instead of being a drawback. You can easily fill in the broad strokes of the backstory and correct the details as they’re covered in the comic, allowing you to jump right in. I can’t be sure if that’s intentional, but it manages to make the otherwise rather standard superhero setup work in a slightly different way than I expected.

Probably because of the speed at which everything moves in the story, I don’t feel like I have a good grasp of who the characters are. The characterization is pretty thin, and there are quite a few characters who either go unnamed or are named so briefly that I didn’t even notice. I really don’t think I know who Captain Midnight is yet, which is a big problem to start off. I think this is the negative side of pulling so much inspiration from Captain America: that’s what I go in expecting, but when they give little indications that he’s very different from that but don’t fill in the details, you end up with a protagonist without any defined character. This is a zero issue, so I guess that it’s to be expected, but that doesn’t mean that I like it.

The root of the problem I have I’d that this appears to be made up of several separate stories, and it really shows. Even though they’re all written and drawn by the same people, the fact that they’re all separate stories deprive this of a sense of coherence. There is continuity, but it doesn’t add up to more than little details in a bigger picture quite yet. I think that this would’ve probably worked better had I read them separately rather than being presented as one issue laying out some scattered backstory

I never noticed the art too much – it’s not great, but it’s also not bad. The only thing I really noticed is that Captain Midnight’s costume is quite generic – I really don’t know what they could do to make it more distinct from all the other superhero costumes out there without looking ridiculous, but it seems that they didn’t either. It’s admittedly not a huge issue, but it is there.

There is one good visual gag that I have to mention while trying not to give all of it away. Since a lot of this issue is about military intelligence and classified information, most of the characters can’t be told everything that they want to or feel that they should know. At one point, while a character is telling part of the story, a flashback panel is shown… with all of the interesting bits literally redacted. All that information is revealed eventually, but I loved that joke regardless.

Overall, I’ll give this issue a tentative recommendation. Sure, it plays out like a mostly standard superhero story for the time being, but things like that joke and a few of the ideas that have been barely explored make me think that this series has the potential to be something more than just your standard superhero book. So far, I like what I see.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) is a staff writer for Red Shirt Crew, and only says that because he doesn’t really know what to say in this blurb at the end. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more thoughts occasionally.