Comics / Comic Reviews / More Comics

Green Hornet Blood Ties #2

By Hervé St-Louis
November 28, 2010 - 11:38

The Green Hornet continues to frame drug dealers and criminals in Century City, hoping to take over the city and clean it of its crime. But something evil is brewing in Japan. Will the Green Hornet and Kato be a match for the new evil Japanese mobsters that want to set foot in Century City?

This is the worst Green Hornet series published by Dynamite. It’s just bad. Let’s start with the artwork. I can’t stand Desjardins' work. It’s smudgy and a bunch of lines trying to pastiche Jim Lee who unlike Desjardins, knew exactly how many lines of cross hatching to put on a page and where he had to stop before the whole thing became convoluted. Desjardins' characters all look the same and have the same expression. The inking i is weak and instead of reinforcing the best aspect of his work, only highlight the bad. The bad composition, the odd facial expressions, the weird storytelling are all put under the spotlight with the chicken scratches that pass for inking. What Desjardins needs is a solid line. Not crosshatching. You look at the page and there is no anchor to help the reader’s eyes latch on to some element because everything is a weak chicken scratch. There is no play of line width and thickness where foreground elements stand out and help guide the reader’s eyes within a panel. Everything has the same weight throughout the panel, making the reader’s eyes wander con tenuously trying to hold on to something definitive.

As for the story, there was no progress made from the last issue. All we have is the Green Hornet and Kato randomly catching crooks and torturing them. The set up of the villain at the airport was an interesting twist, but there’s no way to know how much the Green Hornet and Kato were involved in the frame up and where they go that female assistant. Was the pickpocket Kato or the Green Hornet in disguise? It’s all chicken scratch so it’s hard to figure out. The last issue of this series I reviewed, I wrote that Dynamite should not have let this book go out as is and should have edited it for quality and sent it back to the creators for improvement. There is some kind of improvement this issue, but it’s still a very weak comic book that should not have been published as is. The Green Hornet and Kato are great characters and bad comic books like this one do not build a strong following. If you do care about a decent Green Hornet comic book, turn your attention to Green Hornet Parallel Lives instead. It’s amazing that both books have been published by the same studio and edited by the same editor.

Rating: 4 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12