Adam Graham's Blog: Christians and Superheroes - Posts Tagged "year-one"

Green Hornet: Year One Vol 1: The Sting of Justice by Matt Wagner

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


As the "Year One" title implies, this book tells the early career of the pulp hero the Green Hornet.

The story is decent if not all that spectacular as Britt Reid goes travelling and meets up with Kato, arrives in Chicago, and decides to fight crime as the Green Hornet.

Unfortunately, the big problem with this book is that Matt Wagner takes part of the issue and dedicates it to the Green Hornet's origin and training and part of it to his early case in pursuit of some Chicago mob boss in 1938. The problem with this is that it makes the main story very slow moving. Very little is accomplished in each issue. It's particularly to follow before Britt and Cato get together as the book as you have two back stories and one main story trying to be told in a short 20+ page comic.

The interior art doesn't help. The book's best art is its splash pages of which there are quite a few. Most of them are decent, but they take a lot of space away from stories where nothing happening already. In Issue 2, we get a one page splash followed by a two page splash (which doesn't really have a great impact because of the coloring.)

The book's coloring is atrocious. Characters are shaded in all sorts of bizarre and unnatural light. I do get some shots where pre-Green Hornet Britt is shadowed in Green but most of it is gratuitous and the result is just not pleasing to look at.

One thing I will say for the book is that the covers are good and the alternate covers included at the back are great. Alex Ross' Issue 1 Alternate is fantastic and Francisco Francavilla alternate covers for Issues 2-6 are drawn like old time movie posters. It's all very nice.

I should note for parents that this book is rated for Teens and that is not a good book for young kids. It's got a lot of violence and a bit of gore, but again it's at a PG-13 level.



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