Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Nameless

I think there is a reason that if you take two letters in 'nameless' and switch them around you get 'lameness', because that's exactly what this black & white 5 issue mini from Image is. Written by Joe Pruett and illustrated by Phillip Hester, this series felt like a really bad B-movie made into a comic.

This series also serves as a perfect example of really poorly done decompressed storytelling. Many of the pages in the series consist solely of a panel with no dialogue, then a panel where one character says something, then a panel showing another part of the scene, and then a panel with the other character saying something.

When I think about it, all five issues could have been put into one prestige sized issue--and that would leave plenty of room to stretch the story out! Since I'm talking about the story, I might as well tell you that it's pretty bad. Basically some guy who you aren't told anything about protects kids from a cop, who is also the leader of some Aztec cult. The cop/cult leader calls down some Aztec god who killed the "nameless" (see how the title plays into the story!) main character 500 years ago, but also let him continue to live (no that's not a typo on my part, just one of the lame plot elements of the story).

During the series run, there are some fights in which no one can die because they're dead already... or something like that, I'm not sure. In the last issue, though, the Aztec god is sworded by a chick and dies, which makes no sense whatsoever. Maybe the sword was some magical sword that could kill Aztec living undead dead people. Once the evil Aztec god is killed, everything is suddenly all happy. The kids are now ok. The nameless dude ends up with some chick he met during the story. Oh yeah, and then almost as an afterthought, you find out that the main character's name is Diego. Whoop de frickin' doo. I stopped caring about anything in this series after the first issue, but finished simply because I spent money buying the damn series!

Rating:
Story: 1
Art: 2
Overall: 1

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