Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Static Shock #4

Look, I'm tired of saying it (since I've said it several times before) - Static Shock is a great idea for a comic, and I'm glad to see it back, since I was a big fan of the original run of the series.

Sadly, I'm not a fan of this "new 52" version of the series at all.

That's because I don't like any of the changes they've made to the character and his backstory. Virgil Hawkins now lives in New York instead of Dakota. Instead of focusing on his life as a student, and his relations with his friends and his family, we find he's been set up as a superhero with a secret hideout and special gadgets, courtesy of the Tony Stark-like Hardware.

In each issue, he's gone up against a different bizarre villain who fights Static as part of some kind of gang war. Static never wins these fights - the bad guy always manages to escape.

We see some flashes of the old Virgil in there - he's an intelligent young man who cracks wise and thinks fast - but four issues in and we don't know any more about the gang war than we did at the beginning of the first issue.

The art is fresh and original, but the layouts are sometimes confusing.

I want to support this comic - the lead character has tremendous, Spider-Man-sized potential. But I can't keep supporting a comic I don't enjoy.

So this one is getting dropped from my pull list - at least for this version of the character. Sorry.

Grade: C

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