Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Quick thoughts on Faces of Evil: Prometheus #1

Overall- Eh, this comic really didn't do anything for me. The main gist of this book was to show that the villain Prometheus was not the loser that he had been written as for the past couple of years, but was actually still a credible threat to the heroes of the DC Universe. We learn here that the original Prometheus has been locked up in Blackgate prison for the past two years after being defeated by the JLA. During that defeat, the Martian Manhunter messes with Prometheus' head, leaving Prometheus a near mindless, drooling vegetable. When the Martian Manhunter is killed by Libra though, Prometheus snaps out of his trance and escapes the prison. He then hunts down the criminal who had taken his weapon and name and kills him. With that, the original Prometheus is free to continue with his crusade against justice and order.

I actually liked the way DC went about changing Prometheus' past without REALLY changing anything. By saying a copycat was the inept Prometheus of recent years frees DC up to claim that the original Prometheus is still a major threat. In other words, ignore all of Prometheus' recent appearances and only pay attention to his early appearances, where he was nearly able to defeat the entire JLA. Even though I did appreciate the way DC retconned much of Prometheus' past, I just never really got into this story. Prometheus' origin was pretty stupid(his parents wanted to be Bonnie and Clyde? Because they died, Prometheus wanted to revenge himself on the entire justice system?!? Please...)and Prometheus himself seemed to be a pretty one-dimensional, uninteresting villain. The best villains are complex people who you can almost understand/sympathise with, while Prometheus seemed about as complex as third grade math. It's primarily for this reason that I'm going to give this comic a score of 5 out of 10. This comic didn't really interest me in Prometheus at all, and if anything, seeing him sitting in prison as a drooling vegetable hurt his reputation in my eyes more than anything. Even though Prometheus did wind up regaining his mental faculties, I'll always remember the image of him drooling all over himself while sitting in his prison cell.

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