DC Comics; $3.99
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more… and here’s hoping this new Static series fairs better than the late, mostly unlamented “New 52” version.
Despite the fact that Static is easily the most successful of the original Milestone characters, this new series, called Static Season One, starts behind the Eightball. The failure of its predecessor is the second strike against it.
The first strike – and it’s the truly daunting one – is that that first year of the original 1993 series was – and remains – magic.
Writers Dwayne McDuffie and Robert Washington III and artist John Paul Leon produced what was arguably the best superhero monthly on the stands at the time. No one except McDuffie and Leon in the 2001 mini-series Static Shock: Rebirth of the Cool has ever recaptured that magic to date.
The bad news first: This new series doesn’t have that magic. At least not yet.
The good news: It actually shows a lot of promise.
The energy, if you’ll pardon the pun, is there. The effort and the enthusiasm are there. It’ll take a bit of time to give this new incarnation of Dakota a good shakedown cruise, but writer Vita Ayala, layout artist layouts by Chriscross, and finish and color artist Nikolas Draper-Ivey appear ready to take on the challenge.
Only time will tell, of course, if they’re up to the task, but I certainly hope that they can build on what they’ve shown us with this first issue. That would be a great thing for superhero comics.
– J.C. Vaughn