The Hypernaturals #1

The Hypernaturals


Writers - Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning
Artists - Brad Walker & Andres Guinaldo
Publisher - Boom!


I picked this up because I am currently loving New Deadwardians by Dan Abnett, and I've appreciated some of his writing for Games Workshop, so I figured this was worth a punt. 


The cover drew me, sharp visuals, nice and neat, not too fussy. The same can't be said for the internals though. Maybe I've been spoiled a little by all my recent AvX reading, but the big splash pages with lots going on just aren't doing it for me today. The art is good, I'm not saying it isn't, I'm just not sure about their chosen palette and many of the images have too much going on and t distracts from the comic as a whole for me.


On my first read through I wasn't really sure what was going on; the exposition seemed a bit clunky at times, and under-used at others. I like the idea behind the plot, there is nothing like a good pseudo-robot rebellion to get the blood flowing, but in the first half of the book I mostly found myself rooting for Sublime. Well played to Abnett and Lanning if this was their plan, but I'm worried it isn't, and that I may have missed the point entirely. Still, as bad guys go, he seems like someone I could follow.


The three main characters introduced in the first issue can be characterised as Brains, Brawn and Boobs. They have actual names but I can't quite bring myself to care what they are right now. Brains has deep, black, soul-less eyes. Says it all really. Brawn is a classic bitter Western fallen hero character who I can only assume will find redemption from the alcoholic spiral he has descended in to, and Boobs portrays everything about our current shallow, image obsessed culture that I despise. Yes, she's a girl - lets hive her an illicit relationship and an obsession with her reputation! Yawn.


Credit where it is due, I did read Hypernaturals twice, so it must have some merit, although I did find that reading just the speech and not the quasi-scientific babble helped it out the second time. Again, it seems that the writers were trying to fit too much in, and I'm fairly sure that the impressive images created by the artists could have passed the test without captioning. 


The second section of the book is written as a short magazine article, and mostly reminded me why I don't read lifestyle magazines any more. There seems to be a trend in current comics (The Massive, Idolized, Grim Leaper, Before Watchmen) to add that little something extra to the end of the story, and in many cases it works. This 'interview' just felt like padding to me though, making up the pages without too much effort. I'll probably pick up issue 2 and see if I like where it is going, but I won't rush out for it as a must buy.


Finally, can anyone tell me how / why Boobs gets such am angular rack in her interview shot? I'm both scared and fascinated by it.