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A review by trike
Uncanny X-Men: Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire by Ed Brubaker, Clayton Henry, Billy Tan
1.0
There are lots of reviews out there to give you detailed reasons why this book is not great, so I won't go to great lengths about it.
Suffice it to say this is a throwback to the space opera X-Men of yore, but unfortunately to all the worst aspects of it. It's clunky, stupidly exposition-heavy and the characters are thinner than the paper they're drawn on.
What's especially weird is that Brubaker over-explains so many tiny things but leaves large story items and background information completely untouched. he mentions stuff about these "apocalypse people" but never goes further on what that's about.
This also suffers from Star Wars Syndrome -- everything in the universe comes down to the failed relationships of a half-dozen people, most of whom are from the same family. That sort of thing really undercuts any epic feeling one might get from a galaxy-spanning tale. You could have just as easily told this story during a family reunion in Indiana.
The plot is bare bones but the thing that constantly irked me was that characters would literally find it impossible to proceed with their planned activity (whether that be revenge, justice or ordering dinner) if some random nobody didn't give them explicit details on how things work and why their plan will fail unless they do A, B and C in a specific order.
This is the lamest type of video game writing there is. In a comic book.
Comic books of my youth were ridiculous. No question. But they have managed to survive that and some of them are truly impressive examples of storytelling. This book is not one of those.
Suffice it to say this is a throwback to the space opera X-Men of yore, but unfortunately to all the worst aspects of it. It's clunky, stupidly exposition-heavy and the characters are thinner than the paper they're drawn on.
What's especially weird is that Brubaker over-explains so many tiny things but leaves large story items and background information completely untouched. he mentions stuff about these "apocalypse people" but never goes further on what that's about.
This also suffers from Star Wars Syndrome -- everything in the universe comes down to the failed relationships of a half-dozen people, most of whom are from the same family. That sort of thing really undercuts any epic feeling one might get from a galaxy-spanning tale. You could have just as easily told this story during a family reunion in Indiana.
The plot is bare bones but the thing that constantly irked me was that characters would literally find it impossible to proceed with their planned activity (whether that be revenge, justice or ordering dinner) if some random nobody didn't give them explicit details on how things work and why their plan will fail unless they do A, B and C in a specific order.
This is the lamest type of video game writing there is. In a comic book.
Comic books of my youth were ridiculous. No question. But they have managed to survive that and some of them are truly impressive examples of storytelling. This book is not one of those.