Supernatural Origins - Issue #1
May. 3rd, 2007 08:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
agt_spookyHAPPY SUPERNATURAL THURSDAY, EVERYONE!
Now who can tell me they're NOT totally and completely psyched for tonight's episode?? Man, I can't believe there are only three episodes left this season!
So, who else ran out to their comic book store yesterday as soon as they got off of work to grab issue # 1? :-)
So I'm still extremely disappointed in the artwork. Like, majorly so. Everyone's faces are like...blobs. There's no definition to them. They're like...representations or something, like the artist couldn't be bothered to actually do some research and gather some photos of young Jensen, Jared or Jeffrey (and we've all seen pics of Jensen and Jared as children!) and make his drawings even slightly resemble them.
Everything is drawn with such harsh shadows and simplistic lines - not an art style I enjoy at all. And I'm an avid comic book reader. I've seen a LOT of different styles and I've got to say, this ranks up there with the worst. Which is such a shame, because half the reason you buy a comic is for the artwork. And if you don't care for it, it takes a lot of the enjoyment out of reading it. :-(
Now as for the story itself...
So John never gave Mary a funeral. But we know from Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things that Mary has a tombstone, apparently put there by an uncle that Sam and Dean have never met. Does this mean the uncle gave Mary the funeral or that he just put up the stone?
Nice to see a mention of Dean not speaking, as that was in John's journal.
I liked the bits about John going around trying to get some real answers about what happened to Mary, and of course being met with disbelief.
Now we know that John and the boys were staying with Mary's best friend, Julie, but even she, too, thinks John's off his rocker with how he said Mary died.
Hey, we get to see where Dean gets his pool-hustling skills from - John. But boy, a bar was the last place I'd have expected him to meet Missouri for the first time!
So MIssouri "pulls back the curtains" for John, and tells him all about the evil in this world. Did you notice the drawings of the Scarecrow, the Hookman and the mirror from Bloody Mary? Nice tie-in, there.
Ok, ouch! John had to rip off one of his fingernails??
Missouri does her thing, has a vision of a house and the words "We're coming" written in blood and she and John take off - to find the house a wreck, with blood everywhere. They get the power turned on and see the words "We're Coming...For the Children" written in blood on one of the walls.
John instantly thinks that this message is directed at him, and at Dean and little Sammy so they race back to Julie's house - to find the house wrecked, blood everywhere, and Julie - dead on the floor.
John bursts through the door to Sam and Dean's room - to find them asleep.
Ok, ummm....how would two children have slept through someone being murdered right outside their door??? That part was totally unbelievable to me.
Missouri tells John he needs to take the boys and go, to run, but gives him a piece of...something (a claw, a part of a weapon? I'm not sure what it's supposed to be) that belonged to whatever killed Mary. And with it, John can find the thing.
And that's how part 1 ends.
Now this is interesting. We've never heard that John had a physical piece of evidence left behind by the Yellow Eyed Demon. I'm interested to see how this story is going to proceed in the next five issues.
The remainder of the pages in the comic is a "back up story" and these were the pages that were made available at the CW's site - where Sam is now six years old and Dean is now ten years old.
I've already talked about these pages HERE in my LJ so I won't go over them again, but I wish I knew the overall plan for this comic. I wasn't expecting this extra story at the end, where the boys are so much older. I was hoping for a more linear story telling, not getting bits and pieces of the boys life when they're older thrown in at the end.
But since there's only six issues planned, perhaps this is how it's going to be. The main storyline will be when the boys are still little, with John just starting out as a hunter, and the "extras" will be years down the line. Which I'm really not a fan of. I mean, look at this extra story - so many questions were raised: why did John and Dean lie to Sammy about the way Mary died and when exactly do they finally tell him? If the next extra story suddenly jumps to when Sam is 10 and Dean is 14, we may never get an answer to that.
No matter what, I'll still be buying all six issues, but so far I'm not overwhelmed by it like I was sure I was going to be.
What about you guys? Did you like the first issue?
Now who can tell me they're NOT totally and completely psyched for tonight's episode?? Man, I can't believe there are only three episodes left this season!
So, who else ran out to their comic book store yesterday as soon as they got off of work to grab issue # 1? :-)
So I'm still extremely disappointed in the artwork. Like, majorly so. Everyone's faces are like...blobs. There's no definition to them. They're like...representations or something, like the artist couldn't be bothered to actually do some research and gather some photos of young Jensen, Jared or Jeffrey (and we've all seen pics of Jensen and Jared as children!) and make his drawings even slightly resemble them.
Everything is drawn with such harsh shadows and simplistic lines - not an art style I enjoy at all. And I'm an avid comic book reader. I've seen a LOT of different styles and I've got to say, this ranks up there with the worst. Which is such a shame, because half the reason you buy a comic is for the artwork. And if you don't care for it, it takes a lot of the enjoyment out of reading it. :-(
Now as for the story itself...
So John never gave Mary a funeral. But we know from Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things that Mary has a tombstone, apparently put there by an uncle that Sam and Dean have never met. Does this mean the uncle gave Mary the funeral or that he just put up the stone?
Nice to see a mention of Dean not speaking, as that was in John's journal.
I liked the bits about John going around trying to get some real answers about what happened to Mary, and of course being met with disbelief.
Now we know that John and the boys were staying with Mary's best friend, Julie, but even she, too, thinks John's off his rocker with how he said Mary died.
Hey, we get to see where Dean gets his pool-hustling skills from - John. But boy, a bar was the last place I'd have expected him to meet Missouri for the first time!
So MIssouri "pulls back the curtains" for John, and tells him all about the evil in this world. Did you notice the drawings of the Scarecrow, the Hookman and the mirror from Bloody Mary? Nice tie-in, there.
Ok, ouch! John had to rip off one of his fingernails??
Missouri does her thing, has a vision of a house and the words "We're coming" written in blood and she and John take off - to find the house a wreck, with blood everywhere. They get the power turned on and see the words "We're Coming...For the Children" written in blood on one of the walls.
John instantly thinks that this message is directed at him, and at Dean and little Sammy so they race back to Julie's house - to find the house wrecked, blood everywhere, and Julie - dead on the floor.
John bursts through the door to Sam and Dean's room - to find them asleep.
Ok, ummm....how would two children have slept through someone being murdered right outside their door??? That part was totally unbelievable to me.
Missouri tells John he needs to take the boys and go, to run, but gives him a piece of...something (a claw, a part of a weapon? I'm not sure what it's supposed to be) that belonged to whatever killed Mary. And with it, John can find the thing.
And that's how part 1 ends.
Now this is interesting. We've never heard that John had a physical piece of evidence left behind by the Yellow Eyed Demon. I'm interested to see how this story is going to proceed in the next five issues.
The remainder of the pages in the comic is a "back up story" and these were the pages that were made available at the CW's site - where Sam is now six years old and Dean is now ten years old.
I've already talked about these pages HERE in my LJ so I won't go over them again, but I wish I knew the overall plan for this comic. I wasn't expecting this extra story at the end, where the boys are so much older. I was hoping for a more linear story telling, not getting bits and pieces of the boys life when they're older thrown in at the end.
But since there's only six issues planned, perhaps this is how it's going to be. The main storyline will be when the boys are still little, with John just starting out as a hunter, and the "extras" will be years down the line. Which I'm really not a fan of. I mean, look at this extra story - so many questions were raised: why did John and Dean lie to Sammy about the way Mary died and when exactly do they finally tell him? If the next extra story suddenly jumps to when Sam is 10 and Dean is 14, we may never get an answer to that.
No matter what, I'll still be buying all six issues, but so far I'm not overwhelmed by it like I was sure I was going to be.
What about you guys? Did you like the first issue?
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first ish of "Origins"
Date: 2007-05-08 02:42 pm (UTC)First, I'm glad there's a comic(I NEVER use the term 'graphic novel'), and I do want to read all of them. What didn't I like? The artwork in 'Chapter One.' I do think that the art in an SPN comic should be sort of harsh and unpretty, because that's the world John and the boys are hurled into. But I do wish that the faces had somewhat resembled that of the actors, since we see them every week. I mean, when they get the hair color/texture wrong, that is trouble. (The cover of #2 looks promising, but we'll see.)
I don't have any problems with Missouri and John meeting in a pool hall--after all, these are events that happened over 2 decades ago--but why did John have to sacrifice his fingernail? Ugh. Neither John or Missouri refer to that in the series. And what's with the claw/stake thing? That's not mentioned, either. Or Julie's death. Continuity or canon seems not to be a big deal.
I liked the second tale better; made my heart break for the boys, since they can't even use the pool in this crappy motel. But why on earth would Dean or John lie to Sam and say Mary died in a car accident?? In "Home," Dean perfectly remembers the fire, the heat, and carrying Sam out the front door, which Sam didn't know. (Lovely scene, wasn't it?)Dean said they both asked John often enough what happened, but they both knew Mary burned on the ceiling. I kind of got the idea that DEAN told Sam the car crash lie, and John had nothing to do with that. Again, I simply don't buy it. Dean ALWAYS mans up and tells Sam the truth, and I don't believe that even at that age he would have lied to Sam. Who are the guys that bust through the window? And did Mary have a sister? I've never heard of this aunt, and why haven't we seen John's brother, who I assume paid for Mary's tombstone.
But the last 2 pages, with the boys in the car, were very moving and as close to SPN as this whole issue got.
I'll give Origins #1 a 10 for getting published, a 5 for "Chapter One", a 7 for "Speak No Evil" for the adaptation/new storyline, and an overall 3 for the artwork.
Re: first ish of "Origins"
Date: 2007-05-08 08:08 pm (UTC)Wow, yeah, I'd pretty much give it the same ratings, just a bit lower on the Speak No Evil story - simply because like we both pointed out - I don't believe for a second that Dean and John would lie to Sam about how Mary really died.
There were just too many things in both storylines that contridicted canon and I don't understand why. This comic was marketed as a way to fill in the gaps, yet they're ignoring everything that's already come before. And that disappoints me.
I, too, like the cover of issue 2, but the cover artist rarely, if ever, also does the interior art. I think the guy that did the interior art for #1 will be the artist throughout the six issues. :-(
I do agree with you about the last two pages. There's the Sam and Dean we know. :-)