Customer Reviews

The Nevermen

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is set in a surreal world, with the 50's movies gone high on Gothic Punk. The heros, in trench-coats and hats, try to keep the peace in streets filled with inhuman villans, who are strangely human, much more so than the heroes themselves, in many ways. The haunting tale goes back and fourth in time, showing fragments that only at the very end combine into a complete picture.
Especially recommended for fans of a slightly bizzar Film Noir.

The above are all too often hinted at in comics, but not let loose in their full, bewildering flower. Nevermen manages to be at once the most cryptic and the most exciting comic I have read in recent memory. Guy Davis captures the nightmarish, stylish underworld that the reader fills in, her mind sparked by his examples. The story is yes, not obvious-- but isn't everyone a little tired of obvious? If it were all spelled out, then where's the fun? Well, if it's too mysterious, then no one cares, but it's a hard-hearted reader that can pick up the Nevermen and not be intrigued. I was also impressed at the writing- so spare it is beyond belief-- I too, like another reviewer, would find myself turning back to see what I had missed- but I loved it! I loved having spaces left in the story for me to wonder and work- I will never complain if I am given enough elements of a story and a compelling vision-- I'm happy to wander in those spaces. Read Nevermen- it will draw you back, like a poem or a painting, where part of the story is part of you.

This is, as another reviewer said, something just oozing with potential. Guy Davis, as always, does a fantastic job with characters and weird creatures. But, similar to his own written-and-illustrated release, "Danse Macabre", this work, written by Phil Amara, is hard to follow, laughably scripted, and eventually nonsensical.
It's a sad thing to witness: characters like Murderist and Manboulian are certainly compelling, and the infusion of noir-era dialog is entertaining, but many of the characters speak only in short, psuedo-pithy phrases that signify nothing, requiring multiple re-reads and a good deal of hair-pulling. One can't help but wonder if Mr. Amara felt he was being clever by writing in such a cryptic fashion; I can safely say that he wasn't.
There's a herculean attempt to weave the actions of six characters into and out of one another during the story, but it's undercut by the near-identical appearance of no less than FIVE of them. As gimmicky as it might have been to give the titular characters sharply different appearances, the opposite is no more helpful.
This is a comic that I wanted desperately to love, but ultimately, the near-lethal lack of exposition and the inclusion of short-lived, useless characters (Samek, anyone?) drags it down completely. It's something to "appreciate" more than anything else, a nice picture book with lots of hints at significance and deep passion, but it just can't execute it.
Still, it's loads better than Danse Macabre.

In a nutshell, the concept is great, the art is perfectly suited to genre, the storyline is okay, but the execution is extremely poor. So even though I am giving this a low rating, I think the story line has great potential and that people who are interested should keep it in mind since the next mini-series is coming out soon.

Now my opinion that the execution was poor comes not from what Amara included but what he didn't. And to be honest that could have been Dark Horse's fault. The burden of closure was left to the reader especially from storyline to storyline. Not that closure isn't the reader's responsibility but it should be a mutual effort. Too many times I would read something and flip back looking for what I had missed only to find I hadn't missed it. A small example, which gives nothing away, is when the murderist faces off against a large robotic opponent. the next time we return to the scene the murderist is on his back and throwing a bomb into it's casing. there's a lot missing there. and that at least has more continuity than many of the more crucial parts of the story. characters appear and disappear during the story in a non-sequitor craziness. the murderist's relationship with match is so patchy that i don't even understand the inclusion let alone conclusion of that sub-plot. This was additionally hurt by the fact that it was originally a DHP short that was eventually given its own mini-series. The DHP's are included but convolute the story and make it hard to follow. They should have been rewritten in the least.

In the long run these characters need a series to explore some depth. A series would provide room for the myriad of characters that convoluted this small story. while intriging, characters such as Manbulian, Match, Sully and about 5 others could have been left out. I felt that each page i read of this needed an aditional two pages to fill in missing parts and poor transitions.

Hope this helps.