Black Terror Dark Years

Project Superpowers

by Max Bemis, Matt Gaudio (Artist)

Bob Benton has settled into his "boring" life of being a pharmacist. A daily routine, a co-worker he has a crush on...these are the things that keep him happy. But creeping below the surface are his memories of being a hero. Struggling against his urges to fight crime, he is suddenly sent down a path he thought he had left behind, wanting...needing to be a vigilante, ready to once again punch crime in the face and become the Black Terror!

Genres: Comics

120 pages, Paperback

First published April 14, 2021

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 1 out of 5]

Black Terror is part of Dynamite's superhero universe of public domain characters called Project Superpowers. I don't really understand the point of this as a whole. Each issue is a vignette of a possible future of Black Terror, I guess. None of it is tied together. Like a lot of Max Bemis's writing, it's very obtuse. It's just, here's 5 stories that have Black Terror in them that in no way fit together whatsoever.

[Alex Sarll]

With its veteran crimefighter trying to live a quiet suburban life in the seventies, only to find his old enemies had covertly conquered the world by the simple expedient of using capitalism instead of death-rays &c, this initially felt like something of a retread of Superfolks, the ur-text of superhero revisionism, and even if Bemis is exactly the sort of writer where that would be a deliberate nod, I feared five issues of that might be a bit of a chore. Fortunately, that's not what we get, as this turns out to be a much more fractured thing, five vignettes varying wildly in tone. One issue sees the Terror captured by a Manson-esque cult feeding off his powers; another is pretty much a transmissible Vietnam flashback. The highlight sees the Terror's kid sidekick, Timmy, living through his whole life again while remembering how it will go, because of some typical comics retcon ridiculousness – which I think may refer back to the character's initial Project Superpowers revival, but I didn't read that, and still enjoyed it greatly as a general pisstake. Especially when he goes through his origin story again, and is warily offered the 'formic ethers' that give him the powers he's been missing his whole childhood: "Uh-huh, they look awesome. And totally benign. C'mon Bob, let's just sniff 'em and see what happens, as one should with any inhalant!"

Does it all add up to a coherent whole? Possibly not. I was expecting the final issue to tie everything together, and instead it offered a sort-of-reboot only slightly less annoying than when a recent Spidey comic used the same move. And the first issue's art is occasionally prone to that default Dynamite style, with more gloss than character, but that just makes it stand out more when Ruairi Coleman takes over and everything goes strange. If nothing else, I'd definitely recommend the third issue to fans of metafictional superhero shenanigans.

[Ondřej Halíř · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5

Misty to bylo neskutecne genialni a napadity, jenze bohuzel kazdy sesit sleduje jinou random etapu ze zivota Black Terrora a tak nejak, kvuli tomu to vsechno vysumi do prazdna :D Samostatne pribehy jsou dobre napsany, zapletky šíří dobrými nápady a prostě vás to baví.

Bohužel, ale kvůli ne moc velké návaznosti to vyšumí do prázdna :D