Book of Doom: Wonder Man #1
For the Book of Doom this week, we decided, well, I decided, to take on Wonder Man #1, written by Peter David and drawn by Andrew Currie. Here’s the synopsis, thanks to Marvel.com:
Meet Lady Killer – the dangerous assassin who comes head-to-head with the Avenger called Wonder Man! But Wonder Man doesn’t want to just stop her; he’s made a bet with a movie producer to rehabilitate her into a hero! Is this too much for even the mighty Simon Williams? Fortunately, he’s got Ms. Marvel and X-Men’s Beast in his corner…
Sounds interesting, right? Here’s what we had to say about it:
Jean-Claude Van Doome decided it wasn’t worth his time. He says, “I did consider it, but reading a few pages gave me a headache.”
Fair enough. He’s probably right.
Jim Doom is MIA.
Surely, somebody has something to say. Oh, hey, here’s the ever-reliable Fin Fang Doom’s take:
“U-G-L-Y! You ain’t got no alibi! You’re ugly! Yeah, yeah, you’re ugly!
For some reason that’s the only thing that came to mind whilst reading Wonder Man #1.
While my love for the character isn’t anywhere on the level of Doom DeLuise, I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart Simon Williams. the 90s Wonder Man #1 was one of the first comics I owned. His return in the first Busiek/Perez Avengers arc was thrilling. When I got around to reading West Coast Avengers, I loved him even more.
And Peter David is one of my favorite comic writers. Quite possible my favorite. X-Factor, Fallen Angel, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Captain Marvel…he even made me like 1602 again after the last horrible mini-series they did. I’ll read anything with Peter David’s name on the cover.
But the art was just ugly. Worse yet, it was fugly. It was appalling, awful, bad-looking, deformed, disfigured, dogfaced, foul, frightful, grisly, gross, grotesque, grungy, haglike, hard-featured, hideous, homely, horrid, ill-favored, loathsome, misshapen, monstrous, repelling, repugnant, repulsive, revolting, unbeautiful, uncomely, uninviting, unlovely, unprepossessing, unseemly and unsightly (thank you thesaurus.com!). I never want to look at anything drawn by Andrew Currie again.”
Good points, across the board.
The first comic book I ever bought was the old Wonder Man #1, back in the early nineties. I liked how he was an extremely powerful superhero who couldn’t break out of the D-List. Hell, during the Infinity War, he took out the Hulk’s doppelganger in just one punch. The dude was awesome. Heck, I even picked up the entire run of Operation: Galactic Storm because he was a part of it. He eventually took the entire explosion of the Nega Bomb and lived to tell about it.
This new series just let me down, though. I guess it’s mostly the art, since I didn’t really mind the writing. I just feel bad that they’re treating this as if it’s not all that important. The style of it looks like it’s being made for kindergartners. Forget that noise.
I’m gonna go get Day Drunk. What’d you guys think? Or did you just not waste your time on this piece of crap?
I always thought Wonder Man was a bit of a putz ever since the Hulk made him cry. But I was willing to give this a try due to Peter David until I saw the artwork.
Ick, and I even like cartoony art styles!
While I agree with the general “My eyes! My eyes!” opinion of the artwork, once I was able to accept that it wasn’t going to get any better I was able to sort of tune it out and focus on the writing, which I liked a lot. So, yes, it’s sort of a “grin and bear it” book, but PAD’s efforts made it worth my while, at least.
Marvel should’ve put out a text only version on the side. And, honestly, that probably would’ve sold better.