Earth 2 15.2
Special “Villains Month” Title: Solomon Grundy 1
Matt Kindt, Aaron Lopresti
Forever Evil Crossover
Spoiler alert! You have been warned!
This Earth 2 tie-in to Villains Month was, to be quite honest, not very good. In fact, it was bad. The script seemed rushed. The art seemed basic. The character was forgettable. And I’m not entirely sure what the point of the issue was to begin with, excluding hitting that magical 52 number of releases per month. Even though DC hasn’t really been doing that recently anyway. But enough of that. Let’s talk about the comic featuring Earth 2’s version of the formerly great villain, Solomon Grundy.
It had a pretty bad story, but decent enough dialogue. The art, on the other hand, was quite disappointing. Aaron Lopresti’s artwork didn’t exactly ruin writer Matt Kindt’s story because, well, there wasn’t much of a story. But it certainly didn’t help. An origin story bookended by a “villain getting mad and looking for the hero who hit him in the face” is no stranger to comic book storytelling, but this one just seemed a little out of place to me. Add that to the fact that Solomon’s new origin is completely ridiculous (his lover kills herself, then he kills everyone in sight, then himself, and falls into the swamp and comes back a monster who cannot be killed) and you have a pretty poor reading experience. The violence doesn’t matter because I don’t care about any of the characters. The nursery rhyme isn’t creepy because it doesn’t really make sense anymore with the character. And the fact that they completely disregarded the whole point of the character (tragedy) just plain makes me a little upset.
I’d warn you that it’s not worth the extra dollar for the fancy cover and to save the buck, but to be honest, just save yourself the entire cover price and pass. The story makes no sense, it’s unnecessarily confusing and soulless, and to be quite honest, it’s not going to matter very much longer anyway. I’m assuming that with James Robinson’s departure from the already lackluster regular monthly series, it will be next up on DC’s chopping block. Matt Kindt is a much better writer than Tom Taylor (the guy who wrote a series based on characters from the comics based on a video game), and he’s slated to take over next issue. Go ahead and just take it off your pull list now. I know I will be.
My Rating: 2/5
