God, it's... complicated. Honestly, I laughed as crazy after seeing this Chuck Dixon afterword in the end of the book... I mean, the guys are so obsessed with being the hammer to crash THE BIG TWO, so they just keep missing the point of what makes a good comic book... Like at all!

I mean, who the fuck in the world thinks that there's only Big Two and their comics are something people love no matter what? That's just bullshit. Marvel has tons of awesome comics. Take Immortal Hulk, for example. It not only has the outstanding art of Joe Bennett (who is surprisingly the artist of this Alphacore book, which I hyped at first), but the story is also really great. Here we have a fine art, but no real story to be involved in. After Immortal Hulk this book feels like a setback for Joe, it just doesn't give him an opportunity to really show his talent. There's a lot of normal people and their faces, which is not the strongest part of Bennett's art. A few monsters were great, though.

But okay, let's talk not about that Big Two, but about Image Comics, for example. I mean, I just finished the Invincible not long ago. If there was such a thing as "Marvel/DC hegemony" - it would never be one of the greatest superhero comics of all time. Not even superhero, just comics. And it's not only mine opinion. What makes it so damn great? What, fucking, makes it so damn great, I'm asking you? STORY!!!!! S-T-O-R-Y! And... you won't believe it... get ready... C-H-A-R-A-C-T-E-R-S!

You just open the first issue of Invincible where literally almost nothing happens at all, BUT YOU GET INVOLVED! You just CAN'T STOP READING IT, because it's so damn great. You begin to love all the characters, you remember their real names, their aliases. Their costumes are unique and iconic. You cry when they die, you're happy when they're happy, you just live their lives with them, through them.

And what about Alphacore? Do you remember any of the character names after reading a big TPB book? Are you thrilled to see the next book? I'm happy for you if you do. I don't. Why don't Eric talk about Image Comcis? The Savage Dragon? Spawn? It's not big two, Image was literally formed by Marvel outcasts and it succeeded like hell! Out of nothing! Why Rippaverse can't?

Okay, as always Eric talks about nnnnnumberrrrrs! And yeah, he made a lot of money already, but not from comic fans, only from his YouTube audience who don't even read comics... And mostly because the books cost too much. If you judge by the number of covers sold - it's really far from a success. Of course it's a success for him, because he made some product and found some people to sell it to them. But generally speaking it's not a success. Success is when random people love your books and your characters. When big studios buy licenses to make live-action and animated movies about your characters. If it was the case - yeah, then "the libs" would be owned.

Back to the book. What are the heroes here? What characteristics they have? There's literally not a single thought of these characters was given to us besides dialogues. The comic is full of dialogues and that's it. No exposition, no info about any characters. We have a typical Superman rip-off, who is an army man. That's all we know about him! He's strong, he can fly, almost invincible. Just like I said - Superman rip-off. There were a lot of them already. I'm not a fan of such characters. Even Marvel has their boring Hyperion, but on the other hand there's Sentry, which at least looks somehow memorable and has personality.

Okay, next. There's some woman. She can... Um... I honestly didn't even remember what was her power... She can't fly and she doesn't like to be treated as some super-freak. She wants to be viewed as a cop. That's it. No more character information. No personality. She developed some connection with one side character, though, but it didn't look much important to me. Not really believable.

But that's not it yet! We also have some strong black guy. Again, yeah. Strong black dudes just always work no matter what. Who is he? He can't even speak! He had not a single fucking line of dialogue in the comic! Man, shit, what the fuck? Doesn't he think? Couldn't Chuck give us at least some insight at what this guy thinks about? What he loves? Why he does what he does? How he got his powers? No info. Nothing. Zero! Fucking emptiness. He's just strong and that's it. I just can't forget the issue of Invincible, where he fought Thragg on the sun and they just couldn't speak, so the whole issue could be silent. But! We got one of the best Mark's speeches in all of the series! It was sooooo damn great I almost shed a tear...

Okay, what about the villains here? We have some electric dude, which can practically melt everything with his electricity. He's insane and... that's it, again. We also have some lava Ben Grimm. God, he even has 4 damn fingers, just like Marvel's The Thing! This is insane... Eric July is so fucking envious of Marvel, that he just can't stop ripping off their iconic characters... But HIS characters miss FUCKING PERSONALITY! They miss everything. We know, that he lives with his granny and he's kinda dumb. That's it. That's FUCKING it! Yeah, I know Eric told he loved Marvel/DC before they went woke. But he could at least take inspiration in the personalities of Marvel characters, not their looks.

God, it's insane. I really can't believe they think it's good... They must think it is, if they keep doing it... I don't know, maybe Eric just laughs at his audience and keeps seeling them this crap over and over again... He just exploits people who believe that corporate comics are bad by definition. People, that never saw a good comic book. People, that keep watching YouTube videos about how woke and bad Marvel and DC. Yeah, that's true to some merit. But every woke Marvel comic is just a product of its time, just like those comics from 40's, where everything was about WW2 and those comics from 60's, where everyone was fighting communists and crap. It's just fucking temporary. It'll stop one day, but Marvel/DC still have tons of immortal stories that are objectively good and will always be in the hearts of fans all around the world.

Will these Rippaverse books be in the hearts of anyone at all, besides their creators and those who bought into them being a breath of fresh air? It's a fresh air only for those who never knew that breathing was a thing...

But anyway, the comic is better, than ISOM #1 at least because there's a somehow finished detective story (to some merit, again), no teasers of other series that don't make sense for the story, no pointless splash-pages just to waste some space. It has okay action, the art is fine, but the story is just an excuse for this comic to exist, not something to be considered really good... It feels like Eric got his hands on Bennett and was like "oh, okay... the dude's great. Just let him draw anything and everyone will love it, because it'll look cool". But that's honestly not how it works.

I think our planet will explode the day there'll finally be a great Rippaverse story... For now it just keeps to be a rip-off both in terms of ideas and money. If only some actually good ideas were ripped-off... I give it 6.5 only because I didn't spend a dime on it, Joe Bennett was fine and it wasn't at least boring. I just can't rate it any higher - it doesn't deserve it. And for a price of this book it reads too fast. I'm known for giving some things a bit higher rating, than they deserve, but only because I know that it could be sooooo much worse. Much much worse. It's nothing for a book to be proud of, though. more

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Tempter - Mar 30, 2024

After seeing Joe break through in Immortal Hulk, all the brutality and darkness, not just from him, but from an entire creative team, it's difficult to see in this book something that would be THE RETURN of Joe Bennett.

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