Edison Crane’s wicked smaht. Then aliens want to invade and Satanic cult and Mark Millar really likes Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade and crap. Edison beats em all and whatever.
Prodigy is another Millarworld turkey from the turkeymeister general. Having a protagonist who is beyond overpowered is so boring to read. Absolutely nothing phases this guy and any obstacle in his way is effortlessly dealt with. I’m surprised that if Edison is so supremely intelligent and egalitarian that there are any problems whatsoever left in his world - surely if he was that brilliant a problem solver that his Earth would be a paradise?
The story read almost exactly like The Last Crusade to me but it’s much less interesting when you have a flawless protagonist instead of the flawed, yet likeable, Indy. And I didn’t really like Edison much. He’s soooo insufferably boastful and arrogant. Sample line:
“I’ve written three plays, designed a new telecommunications system and invented a polymer that keeps food fresh for a century. I also grew the company thirty percent last night.”
And he goes on like that throughout the book. It’s not even that impressive, it’s just what an unimaginative person would think a conventionally intelligent person would do if they were extra brainy.
The villains are so cartoonishly evil even by Millar’s laughably OTT standards. They’re called The Brotherhood of the Dragon and their base is The Castle of Darkness where they worship Satan and shoot children! I mean… wow. There’s just no artistic subtlety or any effort of making the villains anything more than the easy to hate bad guys. Such lazy writing.
I liked that Edison got out of one sticky situation by appealing to the hired goons’ humanity rather than simply shooting them (which he did most of the time), and using his memory to memorize an entire building’s wall symbols by barrelling through it before it ‘sploded was imaginative. Rafael Albuquerque’s art is really great too.
For a book about a clever dude though Prodigy is pretty dumb and reads more like something for kids - it’s that simplistic. Another hacky half-assed effort from Mark Millar.
No comments:
Post a Comment