You Win Some; You Lose Some

Headache/Endangered
Kickstart Comics
Lisa Joy/Josh Williamson, writers
Jim Fern/Juan Santacruz, artists

Kickstart has given me two really good reads so far. These two sounded like they might continue that trend, but as it turns out, not so much.

Let me reiterate my belief about comics I don't care for: That doesn't mean they are bad comics. Not every comic appeals to every reader, and just because I didn't care for one doesn't automatically make it a bad one, just not for me. For instance, the first of these two books, Headache, actually has a number of endorsement quotes on both the front and back covers. Someone likes it. Just not me.

Headache refers to Sarah Pallas, an 18-year-old resident at an asylum. She doesn't suffer from headaches, and she doesn't consider herself a headache. That's how her extended family, especially her father and his wife, think of Sarah. The young girl is in the asylum because she has memories of being someone else, the goddess Athena. Her stepmother, Hera, wants to destroy her because Sarah is a constant reminder of Zeus' infidelity. And Zeus just wants to destroy all of mankind.

Obviously, this book is filled with gods and goddesses living in secret among normal humans. Sounds interesting enough so far, but almost all of the characters in this book are extremely one-dimensional. They all come across as so bored by humanity and their existence among humans, why bother to expend the effort even to destroy the human race, as many of them want to do. And Sarah/Athena, being half-human, wants to halt their plans but is pretty ineffective about doing anything. When she succeeds, it is almost more a case of the other gods thwarting themselves. The artwork on this one is nice, but not enough to save the book in my eyes.

The second book, Endangered, seemed even more up my alley. Chris and Mikey are two teens a little embarrassed by their safety specialist father until they learn he is secretly a member of an intergalactic police force and somewhat of a hero at it to boot. Chris and Mike learn the truth about their father when he doesn't come home from a business trip. Instead, a young alien girl shows up at their home saying that their father sacrificed himself to free her from the clutches of a threat to all life in the cosmos.

This one isn't really a bad story, it just didn't grab my attention as much as I expected from the description. Again, the art here is nice and helps compliment the storytelling, it just isn't enough to save the book by itself.