Seven to Eternity #1 & 2
I got this set of comics because I’ve really enjoyed Rick Remender’s comics in the past. I can’t remember how long ago I bought these but if the cover date of issue 2 is to be believed it was around this time in 2016. There was some controversy about Remender’s writing in Uncanny Avengers a few years back that soured me on his writing a bit but I’m not sure where in the timeline of my life I became aware of this and when I purchased the books but it definitely makes me less of a forgiving fanboi for his work.
The details are well documented on-line if you’re curious, but essentially he was being careless with well trodden the mutants as minorities metaphor in the Marvel universe. At best he was being a bit ignorant and at worst a racist, but I suspect the it’s somewhere in the middle. I think he’s a white dude of privilege who views himself as a tiny bit of an outsider like a lot of us suburban white males of a certain age who were into comics and punk rock. I think it’s this point of view that he brought to Uncanny Avengers and when he wrote a speech for Havok that smacked of assimilation he was stunned that people didn’t empathize. He was a bit of a thoughtless shithead in his response to the criticisms and a lot of that is on my mind as I read his books now so I may not be as kind as I may have been at one time. So that’s where I am as I read this n 2017.
That being said, this book is kind of a mess. It seems to be set in a post-apocalyptic Earth or somewhere remarkably similar. Life is organized into tribal factions, mostly hunter/gatherer types. There’s a mystical element here that has a bit of ancestor worship and some elemental/nature control as well. This last part is born out by a big bad called the Mud King who kills the guy we’re supposed to care about on page 12 by burying him in…you guessed it. Mud.
The rest of the cast of characters is so busy and muddled that I couldn’t tell you who it is that’s going to visit the Mud King to exact his revenge. I think it’s a son, but only because of a flashback that happens later.
The art here feels pretty generic to me even though it’s done by a guy who’s previous collaborations with Remender I have liked quite a bit, Jerome Opeña. His work in Uncanny X-Force was brilliantly realized in an adventurous color palette (especially for a Marvel X-book which is normally risk averse). This looks like early 90’s Image generic bleh. And the covers are weird. They look like they’re meant to invoke a movie poster but there isn’t much that is cinematic going on.
And so wordy. The first page is a full text of an entry from one of the character’s journals. And every character has at least a page of soliloquy that seems unnecessary and despite their dialog of how sad they are their faces don’t show it. There’s a lot of sequential storytelling that is left on the table here. We’re being told not shown.
At the end of issue #2 I’m not enthused to seek out issue #3, but reviews of this book are generally very positive. Praise for it’s complex and layered world building and dark, brooding hard sci-fi fantasy themes would normally be up my alley. So I have to think I’m working off of my previously mentioned biases. Maybe I’ll see if the library has the first collection some day, but I have so many comics left to read that I am excited about, I’m not sure I need to pursue ones I lack enthusiasm for just for closures sake.
Comic read on 11/08/2017 on the couch at home.
