5.5
Well... You know, there are indie creators who might be inexperienced and mid, but they at least don't try to put a weight of a "creator of industry saving comic" title on their shoulders. This Rippaverse got really loud on YouTube and other media platforms as some anti-woke, anti-retcon, anti-mainstream comic and you know, I couldn't be not interested in it. Of course I was very suspicious about the actual quality of this book, that's why I didn't bother to buy it and waited for a scan to finally be leaked. Arrrrrrrrrrr. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum if you get what I'm sayin'.
And you know... I would be really disappointed if I'd really spend some money on it. For multiple reasons. Don't get me wrong - it's not the worst comic in the industry as some radical "angry leftists" claim it to be. There are worse comics. Much worse. Unreadable, something you can't not hate. This one is readable, not eye-bleeding, but... That's pretty much it. As always, when some people say it's a masterpiece and better, than everything else, but some other people say it's the absolute worse - then the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Oh, I don't even know where to start... Maybe the art? I don't really spend much time describing it and this time it's really nothing to describe. It's okay. On some frames it's better, on others it's worse. Overall just fine for some early 2000's and I'm a big fan of that period, so can't say the art is bad. But it's not really memorable and spectacular, though, plus looks outdated. And I personally really do prefer guys like Romita Jr who really have their unique style and vision over these normal, but ordinary artists.
Now let's talk about the story. Hm... How big is the actual comic in this book? Around 90 pages or so. And... Um... I remember the times when you could make everyone love your new character in 10 pages of some Amazing Fantasy 15 story. But it's not the case here. For 80 pages the actual story almost doesn't move at all. Isom's sister calls him and asks to find some missing girl, a detective story starts, Isom went to some guy who might be involved in this, he actually IS involved and gives his thugs a command to beat the crap out of Isom, but Isom beats these guys, then gets beaten by some big black super thug, then that dude throws him out of the bar and he hits into some other random super woman and then it's she who beat the crap out of Isom, then he gets hospitalized and escapes the hospital, tries to go back to that bar, gets a revenge on that big black dude, finds the girl, but doesn't get any info from her, tells it to his sister and then he finally gets his super hero suit. That's pretty much it, really. You can try it yourself and tell me I'm lying. This is the kind of story that is supposed to save the American comic industry.
I mean, what makes a good intro story? No, really, can you answer? I can! But I won't give you my answer that easily... Instead I'll give you some examples of other first issue stories, so you could try to figure it out on your own. And I'll use Marvel examples, because Marvel are mastodons of the superhero comics and Eric opposes his Rippaverse to them. Ready? Okay: Fantastic Four #1, Daredevil #1, The Incredible Hulk #1, Ms Marvel (2014) #1, Hero For Hire #1 and etc, but let's just stay on these. As you can see, here is one of the first Marvel comic series ever, plus "Marvel Now" woke Ms Marvel comic and Luke Cage comic (Isom is pretty much another Luke Cage for me, he's literally just a "Power Man"). So, you might've already guessed what they have in common. And if you said "an origin story", then you are right!
You see, I know there are comics like Alias, where we see some random Jessica Jones character who is a detective and we really don't know much about her, about her powers and we get her origin story later. But that was an ongoing comic about a character from a 40+ years old (at that moment) comic universe and Jessica as a character herself was so freaking badass and interesting, she had charisma, so you really didn't need an origin story - the comic was enjoyable as it was.
But this Isom #1 is a beginning of a new comic universe we know shit about, and these 90 pages show us many characters (super and not only), but don't even try to make us love them. Imagine if MCU would start with the Shang-Chi movie, but not even from the beginning of it. Instead, we would see only the second half of the movie and we wouldn't know who the hell Trevor, Doc Strange and even Shang-Chi and his friends themselves are. But at least there would be a cool action with some water dragons! Boom-boom! That's what this Isom comic is. New characters are introduced in a way like you already know them and must hype by default!
The author is so entitled and believing that people will love it only because it's anti-woke, so he didn't even bother with making it interesting and involving. I'll better read woke Marvel comics (and I bought tons of them!) with actual stories and about characters I do care about. It's not hard to be anti-woke and anti-retcon, when there's no actual story in your comic. I mean, there's even nothing to retcon at all, if you'd even think about it. Plus I doubt Marvel were so cool about retcons in 60's. It's easy to promise something like this, when you only started. Try to write comics for almost 100 years and involve thousands of different creators to make your comics and then shit about retcons and how big mainstream comic companies are bad.
Also I really don't get it why people call it anti-woke. It's like calling "antifa" every piece of media created after 1945 just because they don't say that fascism is cool. First volume of Captain America was antifa. This comic is not. Same with "anti-woke" stuff. But I don't remember if Eric himself called his comic like this. I think he just tells that it doesn't have any political agendas. And that's true. Except the fact that this Rippaverse itself is his own political agenda, but nevermind.
Let's get back to Fantastic Four #1, for example. It's definitely the beginning of Marvel as we all know it. And in 20-page story (IMAGINE!) people got an actual origin story, people loved these characters, people found out who they are and why they are together and the heroes even got in a fight with their first actual super villain. No random side-characters just to set up a universe for future books, no scenes wasting time and space - nothing of that. That's what the first comic of your new universe must be (in general, of course FF of 60's is already pretty outdated).
Eric said he is a real comic fan. Okay. Did he even bother trying to understand what made people love the characters of these mainstream publishers in the first place? Why does he bother about, I don't know, X-Men? Maybe because X-Men have an actual idea and message behind them? Because they have actually interesting stories? Because they have a variety of different characters in terms of personality, ethnicity, powers and costumes? Nothing of that can be found here! All characters are boring and none of them have anything catchy. It's arguable of course, but we can argue if you really read comics and not just watch YouTube videos.
This comic wastes too much time on some silent action-packed pages or splash-pages. Yeah, that's really what the first comic of your universe must be, especially when you release only 1 per year. When I see a big page of Spider-Man and Venom fighting - that's cool, because:
1) They look cool
2) I care about them
Two big black dudes I know heck about fighting on a splash-page in their civic clothes isn't something that really gives me a boner, you know. God, such almost 100-page graphic novels sometimes can even be easily translated into a movie. A really interesting and complete movie. Heck, MCU released 1-2 movies per year at the beginning and each of their movies was a complete story that didn't show you anything unnecessary for that exact story. This is how you should begin. But nevermind, Eric knows business, he sold several tens of thousands books to his YouTube audience. This is success, watch his video to learn how to succeed in the comic industry. Huh, I remind you that first issue of Spawn, published by a small indie Image comics company was sold... how many? 2 millions copies? Yeah, this is definitely not an indie success. I don't remember McFarlane being so proud of it so he couldn't stop talking about his successful success.
In the end of the book there's an announcement of Yaira's return and some "Norfrica" announcement or whatever. First of all, Yaira is that super woman who occasionally got into a fight with Isom. Just answer me please, would you be interested in a character, who you just saw on a few pages running from the police and then fighting with the main character of the book a bit? I'm certainly not interested in it. And this Norfrica team with some Kraven The Hunter in the lead... Who appeared in the post-credit scene... You know what made post-credit scenes work in MCU? The fact, that comic fans knew the characters from the actual comics! It doesn't work for some random guys you aren't yet interested in. It's not how you make people interested.
And you know, when the guy gets some actual criticism, he just calls these people "haters", laughs at them and says "HEY, ISOM 1 GOT 3+ MILS, ISOM 2 GOT 2+ MILS, PEOPLE LOVE IT!". Okay. Okay, dude. Then Marvel can show the money they earned from ASM comics and say people love it too. Not like they are wrong, but... Come on, dude, you say you aren't like them, but you act exactly like they do. But they at least can really entertain people and make them feel at least some emotions, both positive and negative. This book was pretty emotionless for me. Some action scenes were fine visually, the comic itself is readable and I can't hate it, but I can't love it more
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