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8.0
Talk about fan service. Have you wondered what it would be like to have the Hulk in the DC Universe? This is your answer and it is exactly what the book is trying to do. Homage, parody, rip off, trolling, all of the above?
On the other hand, Marvel hasn’t done a real Hulk book since Amadeus Cho came along, so maybe DC is looking for a piece of the Hulk consumer market.
This book is almost identical to Marvel’s current Weapon H in its government conspiracy super Weapon plot with a female villain.
It’s a fun read but not much more so far. The aforementioned government villain is like a more boring version of Maria Hill (just imagine) with an eyepatch and it’s issue four and we don’t know much about the main character.
But Venditti is a great writer and the interaction between man and monster has been intriguing and villains have been used effectively. I will keep reading. more
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8.0
Welcome to the Oblivion Bar where the first round is on me and the pretzels are free! Be warned: like the pickled eggs at the bar, this issue is going to get SPOILED rotten.
Damage SMASH! Nope. How about Damage Destroy?! My point: this book feels more and more like the Hulk. So the real question is, are you as the reader ok with that? Let’s find out.
We open with Poison Ivy destroying workers in a field with her vines because she appears to again be upset that people kill, eat, and wear plants. Who knows which version of Ivy this is... it could be King’s Ivy or Birds of Prey Ivy, or maybe the Ivy from the first Trinity arc like two years ago? Can we just pull an Uncle Jesse and “Have Mercy” already? Before everyone gets their kilts blown up, does it really matter which Ivy this is? Does it impact the character of Damage at all or is it just another “most of the week” for him?
As much as a certain group of people want her to be this huge hero, I feel like she’s been, at most, an anti-hero. But either way she appears different than her most recent version. Let’s face it; we want a world where ever comic writer and editor talks with one another, reads all comics, and continues through with glowing continuity. Well, that will never happen. So she’s bad here. It’s established early on. We move on. My only hope is that the Poison Ivy League didn’t see this issue for their sakes. They may be pretty angry about this one.
ANYWAY after my rant on letting go of continuity from one book to another, we jump back into the story with Ethan, or Elvis, or whatever you choose to go by, hiding in a truck to get to New Orleans. Once the truck driver finds him, the truck driver helps Ethan out by giving him a job working in the field for his cousin, which is where we see the two parts of the story connect. That’s right! You guessed it! The same field Ivy is “killing people” ( maybe) is the same field Ethan goes too.
We end the issue with Col more
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7.0
With issue #4 Damage proves that this book is a fun and enjoyable read.
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6.5
Damage suffers from identity crisis - on one hand he wants to be his own hero, on the other he constantly relies on already established characters, outshining him in his own series. It happened with Harley Quinn and Suicide Squad, it happened with Wonder Woman, and now there's Poison Ivy, who by the way, has become pretty popular recently. So much, that maybe Tom King's "Everyone Loves Ivy" story arc from Batman series was a huge mistake, with long lasting consequences.
What makes Damage decent, are normal, daily life parts of its story. I honestly had more fun reading about the truck driver, and then Mexican workers (taking comedic shots at current xenophobic paranoia in the US), than Damage himself, and his encountered with Pam.
Series is far from perfect, but despite terrible issue #1, it has some spirit, and with proper writing, it could develop its own identity. We'll see what writers have in mind for Damage. more
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1.0
DC writers should do some basic research before writing the story. Poison Ivy is so inconsistently written in this that it feels like the writer is attacking any other interpretation of the character the past ten years in order to brig an edgy early 90's feel to the book. I'm disappointed because I know that mr Venditti can do better than that. Perhaps there is a big twist coming later in the arc but since this is a review of an individual issue, this gets a 1. I'll be reviewing my review once the arc is complete but at this point this is not working.
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10
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10
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10
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7.5
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7.0
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7.0
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7.0
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6.0