“Yesterday’s” Comic> Collective Of Heroes FCBD 2018

“Okay, who was supposed to bring the tug-of-war rope?”

Collective Of Heroes Free Comic Book Day 2018

(What do I put here? The name and date are all right there)

For those of you who came in late, Collective Of Heroes was a website that linked to various superhero webcomics, many of which are no longer online in favor of print, others available digitally elsewhere, and others are gone completely.

This year’s offering is a bit more interesting for me as I go through them as it includes a blur by the creator of each comic. Since most of these comics are gone, maybe I’ll learn something I can share. Only one way to find out. Let’s see what they were pushing in 2018.

Adamant

CREATORS: Mike Exner III & Hany Khattab | ARTISTS: Ian Waryanto & Fernando Pinto | COLORIST: Josh Jensen | LETTERER: Micah Myers

As a reminder, this story is about Adamant, a superhero flung into a dystopian future. Captured by the leading mad scientist, Adamant is force to relive his origin story. When working with a fellow ARM agent, Alphonse Alphonso, Agent Tanner sees his colleague zapped by some kind of alien power source sphere. It slowly enhanced his mind, but as Tanner tried to warn the superiors he was also becoming obsessed with a project to create the ultimate human body and put his mind into it. Finally convincing his superiors Alphonse is crazy, he’s zapped by the scientist, who escapes with his frog, Pogo, who in I think the story’s present day is trying to grab some kind of cylinder as someone is instructing him. Back in the past, Tanner wakes up in the body, and has been using his superpowers to stop the rechristened Doctor Alpha and try to track down the sphere. The story ends here for this issue. It’s obvious the new “master of the world” is Alpha, but what happened when he realizes its his old enemy? Being one of the down comics (or rather on Webtoons and you can’t read it without a subscription), I may never know.

Delta Dawn

CREATOR/WRITER: Scott Bachmann | ARTIST: William Grapes | COLORIST: Nate Lovett

This is a sequel series to a comic from a previous installment, Our Supermom. Events since have brought her back into the superhero game with the Alpha Force Defense Team (how many more “alphas” are we getting this issue?) with the condition that she be allowed to start Delta Force Academy, your usual superhero school, whose students include her own superpowered kids. Sadly, none of them is the focus. Instead we have a bunch of very obnoxious teenage girls, except for the one who apparently communicates with her sister’s spirit or something. The other three are just annoying and I don’t think I’d want to follow those characters.

Henchmen For Hire: “The Rookie”

CREATOR: Jeff Langcaon

This series is about a quartet of henchmen looking for work. This story finds them working for a rookie villain…and apparently baseball player as he uses a sonic bat and calls himself The Homer. It doesn’t go well when Fury Fist shows up. I think this is supposed to be a parody but I didn’t find it funny and the art is not the best I’ve seen in this book thus far. Is there worse? We’ll see soon enough.

Heroes Of The World And Beyond

CREATOR: Shave Rivett

Haven’t started reading as I write this sentence but I can certainly appreciate wanting to do a story with all the characters you’ve created from childhood to young adulthood. Having now read it, it’s one of those premises of superhero celebrities, which is the limit of my understanding what’s going on. Who is the green woman on a purple pterodactyl who is apparently new to the modern world as well as the UK? Why is our hero a perv? What’s with his red girl counterpart? I think I’ll stick to finally seeing Tiger & Bunny.

Kickman

CREATOR: Matt S. Law

Another celebrity superhero comic, only without the childhood connection and more of a comedy, starting off by breaking the fourth wall. I’m not sure if Law thinks the so-called “Iron Age” of comics (a term indie creators and fans use to try to get past the current mainstream comics) is just the 1990s supercharged or what but whatever the joke is here I clearly don’t get it.

Miss Melee

CREATOR: Rob Johnson | ARTIST: Ariel Guadalupe

I remember this one. A superheroine comes out of retirement and has to deal with a daughter who doesn’t seem to like her, but is a big fan of her hero identity. It’s just a fight scene, as Miss Melee shows off a power punch superpower (she’s a martial arts based hero) while her comrade comes up with a way of defeating the villain. It’s a good fight scene but doesn’t really show me much about the story beyond that.

Night Twink

A gay NSFW superhero comic by the same guy who did Heroes Of Another World deciding to do the opposite of his supposedly more optimistic tone. Yeah, I’m not reading that. Sorry, folks. Nothing about that sentence interested me. Points for diversifying, I guess.

Salvadora

CREATOR: Rob Johnson | ARTISTS: Justin Durden & Melody

Another superhero comedy that breaks the fourth wall when the hero tells off the narrator. Meanwhile her college roommate wants to expose Salvadora’s secret identity because she’s a wanna-be reporter and doesn’t understand the importance of superhero identities. I’m kind of neutral on this one. Uncovering the hero’s ID by her butt? Oooookayyyy.

Scapula

CREATOR: Aidan Casserly

Our crazy villains are back, except in a monster movie parody when Scapula falls asleep during a monster movie marathon. Not my genre so I’m really out of my depths reviewing this. Art’s pretty good, but the technical stuff is all I can discuss.

The Specialists

WRITER: Shawn Gustafson | ARTIST: Al Fukalek

The Nazis have super soldiers. All the premise we get from the blurb. Luckily the story shows the good guys had superheroes in the war as well. I think this is supposed to be V-Day, but if the superheroes were allowed to take part. In a lot of superhero stories set at the time there’s some reason the powered heroes don’t take part, probably because at the time the comics were made it would almost seem to belittle the soldiers currently dying. Here, though, they can get away with a better war story, as we get snippets of various letters by various soldiers showing how the battle went when the heroes arrived. I liked it.

Supervillainous

CREATOR: Zappit

A supervillain family man. Might have been worth a laugh, but we get an alien who has opted not to conquer/destroy the world after binging a bunch of rom coms and forces the guy who gave her a disguise amulet to go on a date. Eh, still mildly amusing.

Vanguard

CREATOR: Dan Butcher

UK’s premier superhero team is dead and the daughter of one of the heroes now wants the next generation to take on the villains who took over. Is this the one that was in a coma the last time I read her story? It’s basically a fight scene but I don’t know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. Nicely drawn fight but I need a program.

Wonder Weenies

CREATOR: Corey Kramer

I hate to skip two stories in one anthology, but if you’ve seen the other reviews you know I really don’t like this comic. Not judging if you do, but I’ll pass.

overall

A few okay ones but for the most part a lot of these just aren’t for me.