Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Michael Gaydos
Published by DC Comics
This book has been very hit or miss I’ve over the course of it’s run thus far.
I’m here wondering what Brian Michael Bendis is trying to do. The dialogue is fast and furious but I’m not sure what it is he is trying to achieve with the actual plot. This issue doesn’t do much in the way of clearing that up for me.
The issue starts with the Endo Twins standing on the side of the road waiting.
They have a long scene of dialogue while they wait. It’s the usual Bendis dialogue here. And it’s fun to read. It doesn’t really advance the plot, but it is a bit of fun for sure.
Then, Pearl shows up and that’s when things got a little out of hand for me.
So then we flash back to a week prior.
We are back in Kobe, Japan. Pearl is making a deal with one of the Overlords there. It’s overlong and boring. By flashing back, Bendis also kills any forward momentum that the story may have had. We get cool dialogue, sure. But it doesn’t add up to much at the end of the day. It ends just feeling like you’ve been had.
And not in a good way.
We then flash back and forth between present day with the Kobe Twins and the flashback in Japan. Pearl betrays the Twins (I think) there are a bunch of double crosses and it all just feels fruitless. Bendis has a story he obviously wants to tell. It just starts to feel impenetrable after a while.
By the end of the issue, I hardly cared why Pearl was in Japan and why she felt the need to go back to San Francisco. It’s made even more difficult because the story moves around in time so much and so often, that I became dizzy. The motivations of the characters also feel rather unnatural and forced.
The best part of course, is the artwork by Michael Gaydos. He makes the whole thing almost passable. And it is. As long as you aren’t looking for much meaning beyond that.
RATING: C
