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A review by ponch22
Naomi: Season One by Brian Michael Bendis, David F. Walker
3.0
Picked up Naomi back in 2020 when I tried supporting my local comic shop and BIPOC creators (but the employee apparently didn't know Brian Michael Bendis is white because they suggested this and also Ultimate Spider-Man...) Once I realized this was just a BIPOC story told by a white man, it sat on a shelf for a few years.
Decided to finally read it to try and kickstart my 2023 reading challenge ("3 books behind schedule" Thank you Goodreads, I know!). It took me nearly two weeks to read a 160-page graphic novel & it's almost two weeks into February before I finished my first book!?!? Uh-oh...
The story seemed familiar—a young girl (who's adopted) is obsessed with Superman and after he visits her town (battling some random baddie) she starts to unravel the mystery of where she really comes from. Spoilers (unless you, you know, looked at the cover)—she is a superhero herself & real spoiler (and so are several other people in her life)
The artwork was mediocre and hard to follow at times and the page layouts weren't great—there were several times I read the entire left page before realizing all the rows spanned both left & right pages (but this might just be a fault of the hardcover binding causing the inside gutter to be hidden, masking the flow).
Season One collects six issues, and they started off interesting but progressively got worse. I think it was the sixth issue that had several 2-page artwork spreads with exposition dumps in the margins. One thing I love about comics is pretty art with small dialogue boxes getting the story across. I wasn't happy seeing such huge chunks of tiny print to give all of Naomi's background in a few pages...
Oh well, started off 2023 with a meh-tastic book. Wish I would have enjoyed it more to possibly check out Season Two which is coming out next month (just barely missing Black History Month for Bendis... oh wait)
Decided to finally read it to try and kickstart my 2023 reading challenge ("3 books behind schedule" Thank you Goodreads, I know!). It took me nearly two weeks to read a 160-page graphic novel & it's almost two weeks into February before I finished my first book!?!? Uh-oh...
The story seemed familiar—a young girl (who's adopted) is obsessed with Superman and after he visits her town (battling some random baddie) she starts to unravel the mystery of where she really comes from. Spoilers (unless you, you know, looked at the cover)—
The artwork was mediocre and hard to follow at times and the page layouts weren't great—there were several times I read the entire left page before realizing all the rows spanned both left & right pages (but this might just be a fault of the hardcover binding causing the inside gutter to be hidden, masking the flow).
Season One collects six issues, and they started off interesting but progressively got worse. I think it was the sixth issue that had several 2-page artwork spreads with exposition dumps in the margins. One thing I love about comics is pretty art with small dialogue boxes getting the story across. I wasn't happy seeing such huge chunks of tiny print to give all of Naomi's background in a few pages...
Oh well, started off 2023 with a meh-tastic book. Wish I would have enjoyed it more to possibly check out Season Two which is coming out next month (just barely missing Black History Month for Bendis... oh wait)