Tonight’s Comic> The Thunder 3

It's about time I reviewed this thing.

The Thunder 3 #1

Time Machine Comics (August, 2011)

You may remember during my coverage of ClassiConn that I interviewed John Canino, the creator of this comic. I’ve been meaning to write the review for a while now, but things have gotten away from me so much lately. So it’s time to finally look at this comic.

If you haven’t seen the interview or read it yourself in the link above, the comic follows the story of two superpowered humans, Green Lighting and Stinger, and a robot named Efface. They’re good characters, and the plots for the adventures they have are good ones. The art is nothing spectacular, but not horrible, and once you get used to it, it does its job. (And it’s not like my artwork is anything to glorify.)

While I enjoyed the comic overall, explaining the problems I had with it may make you think I didn’t which isn’t the case. I just thought like there was too much stuffed in, like this story could have been expanded into at least three issues. The first part is the origin of the Thunder 3, the second is where they go to find Efface’s origins, and the third is tracking down the people who kill Green Lighting’s wife in the first part. Somewhere between parts they obtain a jet to fly to the alien that created Efface’s AI, and also made friends with the military, getting a liaison they may or may not get along with. It all seems kind of rushed, and the comic is slightly larger than average. (Although I think it’s the glossy paper for the entire comic that boosts the price. Nice for a cover, but a bit much for the insides.)

Then there’s the humans’ origin stories. Dr. Kelly, before becoming Green Lightning, also has a run-in with the crooks on the way to the hospital, who taunt him–in the rain, no less, causing him to crash where he’s exposed to the meteor that gave him his powers. Being in the rain and with his state of mind, they weren’t needed to cause the crash and just comes off as an unnecessary moment. Stinger got his powers from testing an experimental serum from some guy he met in a back alley or something. While this seems like a rather foolish thing to do, even for a dying man, we’re told all this in flashback and it would have been more interesting seeing his reaction to his powers.

There’s some good stuff in here, although it’s not a kid-friendly comic. In the scene with they battle the crooks in a casino, Stinger launches one of his fingernail blade things at a crook, including one into his head, which seems a bit harsh for a superhero when he could have just wounded and disarmed him. Then some old woman robs the corpse so she can keep playing the slot machines, which was supposed to be funny (like the fat guy who gets shot and is only worried about spilling his popcorn) but it just seems overdone, like going out of your way to not make it a kids comic, which considering scenes of violence and blood in the story that works (the argument between Efface’s creators or when Kelly’s wife is shot) already achieves that comes off as unnecessary.

The comic is online, so judge for yourself before ordering a copy. It’s a good comic, but I wouldn’t mind seeing it redone into smaller issues or remembering these in further issues. While it’s not really what I look for in a superhero comic, I’m otherwise neutral towards the comic itself. There’s some potential in The Thunder 3, but there are also a few flaws that I feel need to be worked out.