Scan barcode
saareman's review
3.0
Mentor and Rookie Superhero Tale
Review of the author's crowdfunded pdf edition (2020)
Rounded down from [3.5]
I read Punchline: Blood Sisters as a perk from the recent Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for Punchline: Super Frenemies.
The story has a good premise with one superhero hanging up her cape (so to speak) and being able to transfer her abilities to a teenager who expresses interest in taking up the job. The superhero capability transfer happens via a blood transfer hence the subtitle of the book. This is a world where several superheroes exist openly but still with secret identities. There is tension in the mentor and rookie learning relationship due to some uncertainty in the motives of the mentor.
The downsides were perhaps slight but were enough to bother me a bit. The art work at various points blacks out portions of the face of the mentor in ways that give them a skull-like appearance i.e. two big black shapes for eyes, a droopy tear shaped black drop for a nose. This just looked odd and creepy. Perhaps it is intended to foreshadow some dark intentions in the future, but for a hero figure it was simply odd.
The other downside was that the big-bad in this comic book cycle (Blood Sisters is an anthology collection of Issues #1-5 in the series) was a character named "Sawtooth" which was exactly like the character named "King Shark" in the Flash TV series where they appeared periodically from Season 2 (2015-16) onwards i.e. a shark headed bodied creature on humanoid legs. That just seemed like a cheap steal for a 2019 book.
I still enjoyed the book and art overall and look forward to the next installment.
Review of the author's crowdfunded pdf edition (2020)
Rounded down from [3.5]
I read Punchline: Blood Sisters as a perk from the recent Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for Punchline: Super Frenemies.
The story has a good premise with one superhero hanging up her cape (so to speak) and being able to transfer her abilities to a teenager who expresses interest in taking up the job. The superhero capability transfer happens via a blood transfer hence the subtitle of the book. This is a world where several superheroes exist openly but still with secret identities. There is tension in the mentor and rookie learning relationship due to some uncertainty in the motives of the mentor.
The downsides were perhaps slight but were enough to bother me a bit. The art work at various points blacks out portions of the face of the mentor in ways that give them a skull-like appearance i.e. two big black shapes for eyes, a droopy tear shaped black drop for a nose. This just looked odd and creepy. Perhaps it is intended to foreshadow some dark intentions in the future, but for a hero figure it was simply odd.
The other downside was that the big-bad in this comic book cycle (Blood Sisters is an anthology collection of Issues #1-5 in the series) was a character named "Sawtooth" which was exactly like the character named "King Shark" in the Flash TV series where they appeared periodically from Season 2 (2015-16) onwards i.e. a shark headed bodied creature on humanoid legs. That just seemed like a cheap steal for a 2019 book.
I still enjoyed the book and art overall and look forward to the next installment.