Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

Let me preface my review by saying a couple of things. 

1. This is my Pop Sugar challenge book for 'book I haven't read since high school.'

2. I've had multiple conversations about this character over the past couple of days, from venting about how this was a change towards the darker, how there was no story for close to 100 pages - agreed, and it's one of the reasons I dropped this after a while - to 'hey, I found this character because of you.  I love it, thanks, yay.'  And no, I am not going to point out these conversations.   They are out there in the public, but in case people don't want to be pointed out?   I'd rather err on the side of caution here and not make it easier to find if they'd prefer their names weren't out here in this review.

I'm paraphrasing, so let me add my own thoughts.   Yes, it was darker.  That's what I liked about this.   I'm drawn to darker things much of the time, partly because the real world is ugly and violent and dark a lot of the time, and I feel safer exploring that via fiction.   Spawn did, indeed, fit into this.   I went through a slightly goth-y phase when I was a teen - not the full makeup, etc, but yes I did do some black lipstick.   Spawn's design fed into this, as did his origin.   I like broken/tragic characters, and Spawn fed into this. 

I made some terribad reading decisions when I was a teen.   Rereading Spawn, I wouldn't categorize it as a 'terribad' decision.   A lot of the writing was solid in my opinion, but not all of it was, which I will address later with a specific example, and my guess as to why this happened. 

The original 'nothing happened for 88 issues' conversation also mentioned that Spawn came around at the right time, when people wanted dark and edgy.   No doubt.   There's a reason Frank Miller writes a glowing preface to this, and yes, some of it has to do with how and why McFarlane created Spawn: he was tired of how Marvel was treating him and wanted to do an creator-owned project.   He did.   Miller points out that this was a gamble that paid off, and that it was great for many creator's that McFarlane, and Image Comics, were doing this. 

And yes, nothing happened for a really long time.   And yes, I dropped the comic specifically because of that.   A good design and a concept I liked weren't enough to hold things together that long.  I think that part of the criticism is on the nose, and completely fair.   (I also think some people, obviously, continued reading despite this.   Fair enough!   I make some really shoddy reading decisions, and know that they're shoddy, and don't care.   Something else about the work draws me, that won't draw anyone else.   Or, as in all my reviews, I criticize the work, and not the people who enjoy the work.   I shouldn't have to say this, but, y'know, I feel like I should just in case.)

As for the dark and gritty and changing things.   Well, that's fair too.   This was, in fact, darker than I remembered it.  Like I totally forget about Billy Kincaid, who is one of the more disturbing characters I've read about recently.   If you don't enjoy elements like that in your book, then you're not going to like this.   More to the point: the way that Spawn deals with Billy is gruesome.   It's got that sense of, 'oh, yeah, well, Billy won't be walking around anymore, and that's a good thing.'   As a teen, the brutal death of a child killer probably seemed heroic to me.   I probably was like, 'good on your Spawn.   High five.'

Now, though, I feel conflicted.   Billy was an awful person and I don't believe that redemption, or reformation, were in the cards for him.  I wouldn't go so far to say that he deserved the ending he got - although, again, I probably did as a teen.   More importantly, I don't think of Spawn as heroic for this death, and I certainly would have as a teen.   I was idealistic, but I also believed that there were certain things that were so disturbing that they did deserve a painful death.  Not something I'm proud of, but I didn't see shades of grey back then. 

That was a long number two.    So long I forgot if I had a point three, so let's move onto general stuff about the book and how it's written in general. 

So, let's jump into something I said I'd talk about.   McFarlane and writing.  McFarlane is more an artist than a writer.  I think he had some good ideas.   I think that he had a good deal of talent when writing.  I also think he could have used a helping hand to smooth some things out, like the conversation Al Simmons/Spawn has with his wife.   

First of all, Spawn looks charred.   His suit can restore him, but only as a white man, and he's horrified by this.   He's black and his wife, Wanda, will never recognize him like this, and he sold his soul to see her.   To have her again. 

Al goes to talk to her, and it's really awkward and stiff.   A friend who was talking to me said they believed it was because of how awkward the situation was.   After all, Wanda, Al's ex-wife, has remarried.   Her new husband, Terry Fitzgerald, was Al's best friend when he was alive.   Wanda and Terry have a daughter together, too.   The thing is, looking back, the conversation feels very expositional rather than genuine awkwardness on Al's part. 

There's a way to present awkwardness without it being an info dump, and this was a huge info dump on how Al was feeling about the situation, made even more awkward because we knew he was talking about her and she didn't.   (That in itself would have expressed awkwardness without me feeling like it was an info dump.   Part of the problem is that Al goes on for so long, and the longer he goes on, the more I can see how much a better  - or no, not even that but a  more experienced - writer could have handled this better.)

That conversation was embarrassing for me to read.   And again, this is the problem with a lot of this: there is a lot of info dumping.   And as when I reviewed issue one, the character is a little wobbly, and it's clear that McFarlane is trying to find how this all works.  He does find it, but it's not in this collection. 

Still an admirable first collection.   If you're into this kind of thing.   Chains and spikes and antiheroes!   Totally my thing.