American Mythology Productions 2017
Written by Mark L. Haynes & J.C. Vaughn
Illustrated by Eliseu Gouveia
Coloured by Gene
Lettered by Natalie Jane
Honestly I’m not as big a fan of this as I am of the Atlantis series of books. The show never did really get off the ground for me and I think at the time I was a little peeved they replaced Atlantis with this to begin with. Then of course the actor who plays Rush he’s too good at what he does because I loathed that character. So it’s going to take some time for me to catch up and remember what was going on here before I can say that this is going to be like the show. Personally I wouldn’t mind seeing the characterisation change a tad bit but that’s just me. I have full faith in Mark and J.C. to really pull the story together, get us interested in it and make us believe this is a good for the franchise.
There are a few things that are universally Stargate and that’s the presence of Ancients. Each series met at least one or one of the ancient races, while not exactly the same Thor was indeed a much liked character that we loved seeing. Having them come to this franchise in the way we’re seeing here is pretty genius and the fact that the crew who have gone off for hibernation because of potential power outages on board makes it even better. Why because in all honesty this was the only series where I found that the humans acted like know it all sons of bitches unable to accept they were the superior lifeform around. So this is kind of fun to see as characters take action in ways that are atypical human reactions and some take the opportunity differently.
The guys do some excellent characterisation here as they take these characters and kind of twist em up and show off the effects of being trapped on a ship with no way home. there’s bound to be some breakdowns along the way but it’s not always who you expect them to be. So far we’re seeing the potential that the book has, I feel like in a lot of ways this is a building phase where we are getting out feet firmly planted with what’s supposed to be happening. It has to be both a catch up for people to remember what was going on as well as lead into the future with a current arc. To be able to do both things at once is something the boys are capable of doing so it looks lie it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.
When I looked at the first page of the interiors here what immediately came to mind was that Star Trek Animated series. Yeah not extremely flattering but hey it’s what I see and I’m not sure that’s a good thing. The lack of attention to detail in the linework and in most of the faces here seems to lack the kind of knowledge of the characters needed to make this work better. That each character seems to have different looks from panel to panel doesn’t help either, waking the others up Eli looks different each time we see him and his face. Not my favourite thing to see honestly but hey it’s comics we don’t always get the the look we want a series.
There seems to be a common theme when it comes to the builders of Atlantis and the rest of the Elders and that is that they are somehow problematic. I don’t want to say evil or out to get the humans but somehow someway the wires get crossed and the tables turn and the two find themselves at odds with one another. So how can this be fixed? Not by arrogant human stupidity as we see starting to unfold in these pages. I mean really without knowing the full context of these Ancients they are going to free a force to free the Colonel and create all kinds of havoc? Where is the logic and smarts in that?
I’m having an inner debate on a sci-fi television series turned comic book. That should actually tell you a thing or two about the quality of the storytelling here. The Stargate franchise means a lot things to so many different people it’s probably one of the more successful franchises that have come about that got it’s start through one bad movie on the big screen. It’s nice to see the guys taking the time to really bring us more from the Atlantis and Universe shows and get us to feel about them as we did the original series.
American Mythology continues to surprise me. They’ve got some good solid talent in the writers department and some really interesting franchises in their repertoire. They’ve been making quite a case for themselves so that you should really be paying attention to what they are putting out on stands.