Having lost his powers defeating the Chaos King, Hercules finds himself in Brooklyn, and at odds with a street gang called the Warhawks. He won't let a little thing like the loss of his godly powers stop him (though I imagine his heroics'd be more difficult to pull off if he hadn't held on to his mystically powered sword, shield, bow, and helm), and he even steps in front of some of the Kingpin's men to save a Greek family from losing their shop to the black hole of retail development. They're kind enough to take him in and even employ him, and Herc sets out to repay them by investigating the construction site that's the source of all their troubles. Little does he know, though, that some serious evil lies in wait...
Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente have written one of the best first issues of a new ongoing series that I've read in a long, long time. As a writing team, they really are about as perfect a match as you could hope to find: they can both set up a plot, but with Pak's ability to hone in on character, and Van Lente's superb sense of pacing, Herc #1 is everything a superhero comic should be: fun, exciting, dramatic, engaging. Hercules (as he's written here, anyway) is a great character, alternately compassionate and warlike as the situation needs him to behave, but it feels like he's integrated those sides of himself so well with one another that I didn't get characterization whiplash during the reading.
Moreover, I never felt lost while reading the story, like it was mired in so much continuity and minutae that I couldn't hope to untangle it all without a visit to a series of Marvel Wiki pages (I've never closely followed Hercules' story in the Marvel Universe). Even if I had, I wouldn't have needed to, because I couldn't have hoped for a better introduction/refresher than John Rhett Thomas and Rodolfo Muraguchi's "Hercules Saga" in the back of the book.
A comic script is, of course, only as good as the artist who brings it to life, and fortunately, they have Neil Edwards handling that awesome task. He doesn't hold anything back in this issue, doing a spectacular job of making Hercules look every inch the part of the superhero. Herc dwarfs every other character he meets in this issue, and when he cuts a Warhawk's arm off with a single stroke of his sword, you don't need to suspend any disbelief. If anyone's physically capable of single-stroke dismemberment, it's Hercules.
But, Herc's not the only character in the story Edwards renders nicely. From the cop who only appears in one panel, to Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, the kindly Greek shopkeeper who takes Hercules in, everyone in this issue is well-defined as a person, in dialogue, action, and illustration. The world around Hercules is full and lively, so when the new Hobgoblin shows up and starts tossing explosives, the havoc he wreaks feels equally real. Like Herc, we're invested in this world, so we feel the sort of pain he feels when it all starts to crash down around him.
Herc #1 is just an excellent comic book, on every level, from the first page to the last. As a fan of great graphic storytelling, I'd be doing you, dear reader, a serious disservice if I didn't encourage you, with no small amount of passion and excitement, to rush out and pick up a copy for yourself (or re-read it, if you've already purchased it).
Comments