A terrible new sci-fi series that looks flashy and cool but is actually deathly dull to read? Sounds like a Jonathan Hickman comic to me! And it is - it’s the most boringest-titled book ever: Decorum!
Superficially sci-fi that is because all Hickman’s done is stick “space” in front of everything. So the story of the first issue is: a space courier is delivering a space package to a space assassin to take out a space mobster in a space nightclub. Beef up the issue with the usual Hickman non sequiturs - in this case a retelling of the Spanish conquistadors encountering the Aztecs only this time the conquistadors are robuts and the Aztecs have ray guns and dinosaurs! - and several pages of meaningless text and logos, and that’s a wrap.
There’s really nothing imaginative about Hickman’s storytelling - everything he’s playing with is all pre-made concepts and ideas. It reads like he’s just dumped out a bunch of words and randomly stuck them together - it’s the laziest form of worldbuilding. When you take away the pretty pitchers and just read Hickman’s prose, it’s instant eye-closing stuff - he’s a rubbish writer. And all this guff to tell the most mundane of stories: a mob hit between paper-thin characters you couldn’t possibly care about!
Mike Huddleston’s art is interesting, swinging from beautifully painted art to spare black and white inks, seemingly randomly, though it does nothing but add to the overall air of confusion - why is the art style so inconsistent? Is it because nothing else interesting is happening on the page?
If you’ve read Hickman before and were wondering whether this is the title where you finally understand why he’s so unfathomably popular, it’s not gonna convince you otherwise. Decorum #1 is incoherent, bad sci-fi sludge that his fans will swear blind is his latest indisputable masterpiece - don’t believe it.
No comments:
Post a Comment