Cyberforce

Cyberforce 1-4

Cyberforce 1-7, 9-11

The original miniseries and the regular series that followed.  I’m stunned not stunned at the horrendous writing that infests these pages.  I wasn’t expecting greatness, the glasses of my memory weren’t that rose-colored.  But I didn’t remember it reading like a parody of Chris Claremont. And...there’s Chris Claremont writing issues 9 through 11, showing that he doesn’t need anyone to show him how to mock himself.  He does just fine on his own. I need to create a new rating for this. It wasn’t so bad that I wanted to stop reading. It wasn’t boring, it wasn’t hateworthy. It was so bad that calling out all the horrible problems with it became an entertaining game all by itself.  Examples from issue 11:

My god, all the narration.  So much internal narration. And even more verbal narration as all the characters explain everything that’s happening.  And the horrible quips!

What is she wearing??  Who talks to a comrade in arms at pre-kiss distance with an intimate chin lift??  What does “I can’t function in cyberspace” even mean???

Words fail me.

For the first time, Mark Silvestri’s art smacked more of Rob Liefeld than Jim Lee.  I’ve always liked him up until now, but so many little things stood out this time around that I’ve had to bump him down a few notches in my estimation.  

That's a Liefeldian number of visible teeth.

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s like he does all that cross-hatching without understanding what makes it so effective.  His faces, especially, lack depth. If it weren’t for the coloring, would it really look that different from the fan art that they print in the letter column?

Can you tell the difference between Eric Silvestri and Chris Claremont monologues?

Okay, that’s pushing it a bit too far, but Silvestri's not as close to Jim Lee as I’d previously thought he was.  

From a creative standpoint, the team itself lacks any kind of originality.  It’s a common problem among most of the Image team books of that era. Impact: Colossus clone, obligatory team strong-man.  Ripclaw: Wolverine clone with sharp claws. Cyblade: Psylocke clone, down to the psychic blade. Heatwave: Cyclops clone, generic energy-blast shooting leader.  I’d call him out for having no personality (just like Cyclops), but everyone else on the team is just as bland.

Stryker doesn’t have a real analog, but his hook is that he’s got three right arms.  The reason he has no doppelganger is because that’s just about the stupidest mutant ability I’ve ever seen.  And it’s not like they’re his real arms, either - they’re cybernetic replacements for the ones that got blown off in an explosion.  If it was really such a great power, why haven’t they given everyone 2 extra arms? On the same side of their body?

That’s before you even get to the arm placement fudging.  There’s no consistency from drawing to drawing, because there’s no sense to be made out of it.  Do they share a shoulder joint?

Are they attached to his body vertically along his side?

Or does the artist just give up and not even pretend that the arm has a connection point to the body?  The laziness in character conception drives me crazy.

He sums it up so well.

So yes.  There’s a ton to pick apart, and this was fun to rant about.  So new rating.

   

Regret buying: No

Would buy again: No

Would read again: Yes

Rating: Trainwreck bad