Tuesday, April 19, 2011

The League of Super Groovy Crimefighters #1

The League of Super Groovy Crimefighters #1 (June 2000)
Ongoing series
Ancient Studios



This series, which ran for five issues (only the first one in colour), appears to be the only offering from Ancient Studios and the only comic written by Jan-Ives Campbell. I can sort of see why. It's not that it's bad, per se. It's certainly not the worst thing I've looked at here on the bin. It's just not very good.

Like the Heroes of Rock and Fire comic that I reviewed last year, reading this comic leads you to believe that the creator has much more of the world sketched out in his head than he's showing you, and it suffers for it. There's a bit of an origin/explanation of the League on the inside cover, but personally I found that more interesting than what actually took place on the pages of the comic. The story features a bunch of people in costumes going through some bland comedic bits, with little to no personality to differentiate them from one another. I'm not sure if this is because there are too many characters thrown in all at once, or because of the awfully generic c-grade humour. Probably both.

There's a back-up story about Sergeant America finding out funding for his superheroing has been cut (which will cost him his powers) and going on the run. This is much better, because you get to focus on a couple of character rather than a half-dozen, and also because the humour is a bit more original than "Superheroes cause so much property damage when they fight crime!" I actually felt kind of bad for Sgt. America when he discovered his girlfriend (whom he had admittedly left behind five years before when he became a hero) was sleeping with the supervillain the Sceptre.

I got this for 50 cents, and I guess it's hard to say I didn't get my money's worth because I did enjoy the back-up. Still, you're probably better off holding onto those quarters in case you need to make a phone call.

2 comments:

  1. hey Jamie sorry to off topic here but i thought you might be interested in this ROM Spaceknight blog i also have just in case you don't know about it already: http://www.romspaceknightart.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete