A review by tobin_elliott
Victor Lavalle's Destroyer, Volume 1 by Victor LaValle

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Hmmm...

While I enjoyed this one...especially the art...I will say I believe LaValle may have bitten off more than he'd realized with all the things going on in this story. There's racial tension. There's 3-D printing of living beings. There's nanobots. There's secret gov't agents. Oh, and there's Frankenstein's monster, who's suddenly a couple of hundred years old and superpowered as the Hulk.

I honestly believe LaValle could have left Mary Shelley's most famous creation right out of the mix and made it more about the NanoBoy and had a cleaner story. 

I enjoy LaValle's writing, and I enjoy seeing things we see everyday...such as casual racism...dealt with in a strong way. 

But overall, as a Frankenstein's monster story? No, I believe it was an abject failure. When you've got a piecemeal human—made solely from human parts—doing Hulk-style jumps and ripping apart huge metal robots with his bare hands? Nope. You've kinda left Mary Shelley's true creation on the cutting room floor.