Comics / Comic Reviews / DC Comics

52 Week Twenty Six

By Hervé St.Louis
November 12, 2006 - 14:30

The Black Marvel family visits Sivana’s family and discusses the disappearance of several mad scientists. Meanwhile, a talking crocodile escapes from Sivana’s laboratory threatening the party. Is the dinner doomed?

It’s the midpoint of DC Comics’ 52 series, and the series continues to wander without any objective. If I had not committed to purchasing this series, I would have dropped it a long time ago. 52 combines the worst of comics from the 2000s. It’s written by authors who have gained preponderance over artists; the same authors have a tendency to stretch and pad stories with nothing forcing readers to buy several issues of a story that a decade ago would have been told in a limited amount of pages; there are “clever” tricks to force the readers to play detective and catch clues in order to keep him reading instead of providing a decent plot and characters they could care about; the story backpedals into the worst years of the comic book industry by rebooting the most stupid and infantilising concept hack writers from a previous generation pulled after they had nothing more to say about the characters they were writing about.

Here, the writers introduce a talking crocodile that hails from earlier Captain Marvel stories while giving us a hint of the life and family of an evil crazy scientist. It’s not even a comedy. As a reader, I clearly don’t know what this series is about and what I’m supposed to be expecting. I guess the real story will make sense toward the end of the series, but I have a feeling that all that padding could have been compressed into a few stories.

The artwork is decent, considering the poor material the artists have to work with.

3/10

52 Week Twenty Five

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12