Black Adam gets the space cancer so, before he dies, he decides to pass the mantle onto a descendant: a New York med student called Malik White. But Malik doesn’t want to be the new Black Adam. And Black Adam is still fighting for his… “life”?... in the afterlife! What’s going onnn…
Black Adam and Christopher Priest - or “PRIEST” as he goes by now, that’s how cool he is; more on his coolness later - two crap tastes that taste crappier together! This new Black Adam series sinks like a stone with the first volume, Agony to Read.
Sometimes writers you don’t like can surprise you by writing something great but PRIEST is as woefully inept as he’s always been - he’s never written a good comic before and he still hasn’t. Who are the alien parasites that give Black Adam his space cancer and why have they given it to him now? Don’t know. Not that it seems to be that effective - neither Black Adam or Malik die from it and, after a certain point, it’s forgotten about entirely.
God, the new character, Malik? He’s so awesome. This is how in touch with da yoof 62 year old PRIEST is - this is actual dialogue twentysomething Malik says from the comic:
“Affirmative action, bee-yotch. You ‘bout to get cut by the 83rd percentile! Make it rain, make it rain!”
“Shee… I’m ‘bout to ‘Oppan gangnam style’ up in this piece”
“They call meeee Mr. Tebbs!” (because the kids have all seen Sidney Poitier’s 1967 movie In the Heat of the Night)
“Yeah. How you like me now. Got 99 problems but a demon ain’t one… bee-yotch.”
It’s dialogue that, if a white writer had written it, it’d be a problem. I think PRIEST wants us to think Malik is cool but he just comes off as a completely unconvincing young character being written by an elderly man - not cool, just a dork. Which is a different kind of problem because then we’re not on his side or care about his journey of being the new White Adam (really).
There’s a political rival/assassination subplot that goes nowhere, Etrigan fights Malik for no reason, and everyone Black Adam fights is an illusion so there’s really no stakes to anything happening here - it’s all very unsatisfying and incompetently put-together. Your average PRIEST comic, then.
A thoroughly boring, idiotic, embarrassing-for-all-concerned read - would I recommend Black Adam, Volume 1: How Do You Do, Fellow Kids? Shee…
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