Scan barcode
adelaidemetzger_robotprophet's review
4.0
This is the first Red Tornado comic I’ve ever read and I understand that this little volume was put together to bring attention to the Young Justice TV series, but something went wrong here.
I enjoyed reading it because I like the character of Red Tornado (he’s a robot—there seriously aren’t enough emotional robots in comics people) and I especially liked him in the Young Justice series which this volume follows kind-of the same plot involving him having siblings that own different elemental abilities. I loved that he had a family and loved them like a normal person and it there were little droplets of feels when it came to him trying to understand his sister and brothers.
However much there was good, I almost didn’t give this book a chance for reasons hard to explain. It starts out with a narration in descriptive boxes like most comics, but though most comics do this, it must be done right. This is an example of it being done wrong. I don’t know what the writer was trying to do but the first half of the book’s panels are interrupted by these yellow narrative boxes that describe exactly what action is being committed. Why are you telling me what’s physically happening when I can see it myself in the beautiful art?! It drove me crazy! The disembodied yellow voice was smartly replaced with Red Tornado’s thoughts—and I wonder to God why they didn’t do that in the first place. It’s like have way through writing the darned thing the writer’s like, “Oh, maybe it should have been Red Tornado narrating instead of me,” and forgot to change the detail through the editing process. My first thought was that they had made this comic for little kids so they would know what’s going on—but that assumption was dismissed when the characters began to use mild language and people are shown burned alive. After finishing it and thinking about how to summarize it, I realized that the hasty plot and painful panel descriptions reminded me of the Bronze Age Green Lantern comics I own, realizing that this quick miniseries permitted to be published by DC was trying to hit the nostalgic notes that some would appreciate if they had read the original Red Tornado comics.
I’ve accepted that reason so I could give the comic a 4 star rating instead of 3. Overlooking that strange, unexplainable narrative flaw I really enjoyed the drama and peril that was put into this as well as how human Red Tornado really was—also his personal feud between Red Volcano and Red Tornado was deliciously conflicting. With a caring and imaginative writer this could have actually been as compelling a series as Young Justice.
I enjoyed reading it because I like the character of Red Tornado (he’s a robot—there seriously aren’t enough emotional robots in comics people) and I especially liked him in the Young Justice series which this volume follows kind-of the same plot involving him having siblings that own different elemental abilities. I loved that he had a family and loved them like a normal person and it there were little droplets of feels when it came to him trying to understand his sister and brothers.
However much there was good, I almost didn’t give this book a chance for reasons hard to explain. It starts out with a narration in descriptive boxes like most comics, but though most comics do this, it must be done right. This is an example of it being done wrong. I don’t know what the writer was trying to do but the first half of the book’s panels are interrupted by these yellow narrative boxes that describe exactly what action is being committed. Why are you telling me what’s physically happening when I can see it myself in the beautiful art?! It drove me crazy! The disembodied yellow voice was smartly replaced with Red Tornado’s thoughts—and I wonder to God why they didn’t do that in the first place. It’s like have way through writing the darned thing the writer’s like, “Oh, maybe it should have been Red Tornado narrating instead of me,” and forgot to change the detail through the editing process. My first thought was that they had made this comic for little kids so they would know what’s going on—but that assumption was dismissed when the characters began to use mild language and people are shown burned alive. After finishing it and thinking about how to summarize it, I realized that the hasty plot and painful panel descriptions reminded me of the Bronze Age Green Lantern comics I own, realizing that this quick miniseries permitted to be published by DC was trying to hit the nostalgic notes that some would appreciate if they had read the original Red Tornado comics.
I’ve accepted that reason so I could give the comic a 4 star rating instead of 3. Overlooking that strange, unexplainable narrative flaw I really enjoyed the drama and peril that was put into this as well as how human Red Tornado really was—also his personal feud between Red Volcano and Red Tornado was deliciously conflicting. With a caring and imaginative writer this could have actually been as compelling a series as Young Justice.
More...