I’ve figured out what DC’s “New Age of Heroes” line is: a series ripping off Marvel properties! That joke Damage was their shitty Hulk while The Terrifics are their equally shitty take on the Fantastic Four.
They are: Mr Terrific (Mr Fantastic), Phantom Girl (Invisible Girl), Plastic Man (Human Torch), and Metamorpho (Thing). Their white uniforms are even reminiscent of Future Foundation-era FF and there’s a double-page spread of a giant monster emerging from underneath a street like Giganto on the cover of the first Fantastic Four issue!
After a cosmic event, the four characters can’t separate otherwise they’ll die - Jeff Lemire couldn’t think of a better reason to get these four together so he went the super-contrived route! Lemire’s been on a no-hitter since Roughneck but The Terrifics may be among his most dire efforts. Here’s an example of how little attention he’s paying to his script - or he’s somehow gotten immeasurably worse as a writer in the past couple years (highly possible):
Simon Stagg is trying to access the Dark Universe via a portal kept open by Metamorpho. Mr Terrific walks in and Stagg tells him he doesn’t know how to close it. A few pages later Mr Terrific tells Stagg to close the portal - did he already forget that Stagg told him he couldn’t close the portal? Stagg again tells him he doesn’t know how to close the portal. A few pages later Mr Terrific tells him again to close the portal - twice! - and then says that it’s up to him to close the portal.
Mr Terrific is meant to be the third smartest man on Earth but here he’s written as a complete idiot with a goldfish-like memory! This series of exchanges is representative of how carelessly written, inane, repetitive, pointless and totally unexciting the book is.
In Lemire’s hands Mr Terrific is completely unlikeable, Plastic Man is plain annoying and the other two are nonentities. Their personal stories are superficial and dull, the action is forced, and nothing that happens ever rises above boring.
The only quasi-noteworthy thing is that this is where yet another Alan Moore character, Tom Strong, is folded into the DC Universe. So, all five Tom Strong fans out there can get worked up over that one. Who is Tom Strong? He’s (ironically) a less strong Mr Incredible. And here he only appears as a hologram as he’s “dead” but comics characters die like you and I have hot dinners so I’m sure Lemire will find a hacky way of bringing him back somehow.
Dismal, uninteresting and arduous reading: the “Terrifics”? Ha - what a misnomer!
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