Monday, July 12, 2010

Review Of Hardware Issue #1

Review of Hardware Issue #1 Published by Milestone/ DC Comics
Reviewed by JustiN Taylor aka khyron1144

What is it? A comic book. Glossy cover, non-glossy interior. Color throughout. Was originally available in deluxe bagged edition and non-bagged regular edition. Bagged version included a poster, trading card, and other extras.

Plot Summary: Curtis Metcalf is a genius. He works for Edwin Alva. Alva paid Metcalf's way through college, in exchange for him agreeing to work for Alva Technologies.

Curtis finds out Alva is corrupt and tied to organized crime. Curtis builds a suit of super armor and becomes a superhero fighting Alva's criminal enterprises.

I suppose this is as good a place as any to mention that Curtis Metcalf is black, and Edwin Alva is white.

What's good about it? Adding color diversity to superhero comics is a good thing. The script is engaging. Curtis's dialogue is not the exaggerated picture of blackness that say, Marvel's Luke Cage's is.

What's not quite so good? It feels like all set-up for the future and no real action.

What the… ? Moments: Just the basic problem of super armor’s implausibility. Not technologically or physically, but legally and socially. If Bill Gates built what is in effect the next generation of fighter jet in his basement workshop, there is no way the government would let him keep it for his own private use.

Who should get it? Anybody who likes a good story told in comic book form.

Rating: 4 Stars (of five)

Method Of Acquisition: The seventy-five cent box at Tardy's Collector's Corner on Burton Street in Grand Rapids, MI