The second
reason is constant reboots. And I’m particularly aiming my gun at Marvel here,
if you’re gonna keep rebooting your titles every year, what’s the point in me
even reading them. I’ve basically dropped my Marvel titles to Ms Marvel and
Star Wars related stuff. Although a lot of that is down to titles I was
enjoying coming to an end, with no other writer taking over for some reason.
Speaking of
writer’s taking over, word to DC and Marvel. A new creative team is not enough
to justify relaunching the entire title. We don’t need a Superman #1 just
because Bendis is involved, especially if essentially it’s just continuing
where it was left off. At least when Darth Vader relaunched, it decided to take
place in an entirely different period of his history. But rant over, how are we
gonna end this, on a brand-new DC Character: Sideways
The event
Dark Knights: Metal is a decent one, it brought Martian Manhunter back into the
fray after a long absence, delved into the Hawkman/Hawkgirl mystery and more
importantly was a decent story in its own right, although it had far too many
one-shots and tie-ins. No Justice #1, which followed immediately after was also
a good read. But before we got that, we got ‘The New Age of Heroes’ a line of
new characters who had origins linking to the event, there were about 8 titles,
and I’ve heard good things about some of them, but the one that intrigued me
was Sideways.
As plotters
we have Kenneth Rocafort and Dan Didio. I’ll leave off criticising Didio, but
he was involved in a lot of poor creative decisions during the New52 and even
before then. You might remember Kenneth Rocafort, he was an artist during the
second Teen Titans run in the New 52, at least the issues I reviewed. That
wasn’t well written, but I was OK with the art. Helping Didio out with Dialogue
is Justin Jordan, I have next to nothing I can say about him since I haven’t
read any of his work.
Rocafort
also handles the artwork, with colouring by Daniel Brown. Don’t have much to
say about him either, since I haven’t read his work, but he was also on later
issue of that Teen Titans volume I reviewed. So, let’s just take a look
We open on
Sideways surprising a woman in the bathroom. What an endearing start! The woman
is named Ernie, she’s the best friend of Derek James, aka Sideways and knows
his secret identity even made his costume, she has a twin sister who thinks
she’s better and a loud disapproving father figure, we see Derek’s strength on
display as he can hold a full chest of drawers in the air, it’s not Superman
level but it gets him by.
We cut to
Derek’s house and we’re introduced to Derek’s adopted parents, we don’t know
who the father is just yet, but his mother’s name is Helen. After the incident
in Dark Knights Metal where a mountain grew in the city, she insists on driving
him to school. She calls him, giving him 5 minutes, he says he’ll be 10 and he
takes nearly 20. In other words, he acts like a teenager.
He texts a
proper apology to Ernie, saying he’s excited about something and today is ‘the
day.’ In school he’s teased for having his mother drop him off, and as he day
dreams in physics, we see what happened during Metal. When the mountain grew in
the city, cracks started to occur in the streets and Derek falls into one of
them. He wakes up in a hospital 4 days later with the ability to ‘rift’ ie,
create cracks in space he can go through. There’s some stuff about an
internship but I’ll get to that when it comes into play later on.
The bell
rings and Derek takes a while to get out of his class, much to the mocking of
his fellow students. When he finally gets out he’s on a free period and rifts
to the roof. He remarks how he doesn’t seem to be getting nausea, blurry vision
or headaches from the experience any more, and he gets out his costume.
He gets out
his phone and begins recording a segment for Steppin’ Out with Sideways, he
begins demonstrating his powers, rifting everywhere, also falling into a lake
when he rifts right above one. As he continues his video, he hears a voice
telling him to stop, that his infractions must cease. He tries to rift away but
the voice follows him wherever he goes. He rifts into the sky and begins
falling, he drops his phone and it smashes on the ground. The figure that’s
been talking finally confronts him, he’s considered a threat to the brane of
space time and is to be sentenced to death.
So, that
figure, his name is Tempus Fuginaut (because writers be lazy) he’s similar to
the completely useless monitors except he’s useful and cares more for
protecting the space/time continuum, and the barriers between dimensions given
what happened in Metal you’ve been doing a bang-up job there. Tempus Fuginaut’s
mere presence seems to disrupt Sideways’ powers, so he takes a leap, initially
trying to slow his descent with thee building, but he gets far enough away from
the figure to open rift and… I’m not entirely sure what happened next, the
narration is in contrast to the artwork.
In the
artwork he rifts into the lake, creating a big splash as he hits it but the
narration says he couldn’t because at the speed he was going, he’d be dead. He
takes off his mark when he reaches the surface and makes it to shore but he’s
pretty banged up from everything.
Ernie’s
trying to get in contact with Derek, but she soon hears someone at the door,
Derek is badly injured, barely able to propel himself through the rift. She
uses a discount Uber service to get him a car to the hospital. Back at the lake
we see some goo come out of a rift and hit a duck, hard to tell if the duck
died or it was transformed but I’m guessing the former since the goo continues
to float on the water.
Lucky for
Derek his shoulder is dislocated. Ernie tells the Doctor he did this for some
Youtube stunt, which is a pretty stupid excuse, since that would immediately
worry anyone close to him not in on his secret. Anyway, Helen arrives, worried
sick about Derek. I do like this mother, she’s everything a good mother should
be, sure she’s over-protective but that comes specifically from a traumatising
event, his disappearance during the Mount Gotham incident, we see from her
perspective as she was searching hospitals for him and makes a good speech to
him whilst he’s asleep.
Ernie covers
his costume, whilst Helen talks to the doctor about them running tests, he’s
gonna be moved to a private room overnight, but Derek is less happy. Not sure
why but when he gets up he’s dazed and almost falls over, Ernie catches him.
There’s commotion in the lobby as an injured patient they’ve deemed dangerous
enough to put in cuffs escapes those cuffs. She’d been here before, asking for
help and they’d done nothing.
She knocks
out the guards with some wind then uses the sedative they were going to use on
her on one of the doctors. The wind knocks a desk over and Helen uses herself
to shield Derek. You see why I like her, yet? Anyway, Derek asks Ernie to take
care of his mother, puts on his mask and confronts the villain, her name is
Killspeed
She claims
everyone in the room to be dead but Sideways quickly checks and they’re all alive,
she charges at him but he opens a rift and sends her out of the hospital. He
goes out and confronts her, but she runs away and he’s in no state to catch
her. Instead he opens as many rifts as he can to try and see her through them.
Kid if a being as big and powerful as Tempus Fuginaut told me my powers were
leading to catastrophic damage, I’d maybe listen and hold back a little, just
saying. Still, he finds her and catches up with her.
She’s weak,
every step she’s taking is leading her closer to death. She called herself
Killspeed as a joke, as it’s her that she’s killing with it. We get her origin,
and it relates to a Flash story-line where there was a storm that granted people
the speed force. She was suffering from Leukemia but she did have it medically
covered, but was beginning to struggle with the bills. When she got the powers,
she began to use it to get the money she needed but when she uses her powers it
accelerates the spread of her cancer and now she has enough money, she’s too
far gone.
Sideways
tells her to get back to the hospital, advising that the police should treat
her fairly but that kind of snaps, it’s reminded her she has basically nothing
to live for and doesn’t hold back with her wind powers, blowing a bus towards
Sideways, he uses a rift to protect himself and as a result the bus explodes as
it’s ripped in half. Pretty sure buses are electric powered so don’t know why
it exploded to such a degree but lets allow for creative lightning
She begins
running around him, creating a vacuum and sucking out his air, he comes up with
a something as he’s close to passing out, he creates a rift at foot height
which she trips on, knocking her out. Sideways takes his mask off again,
remarking that he needs to consult Ernie about how hard it is to breathe with
it on.
He puts his
mask back on and looks onto her unconscious body as the police arrive, but they
try and arrest him, until she gets a second wind and grabs him by the throat,
he rifts out, leaving her with the police, he lands in the park but soon
realises he took her arm with him. Two days later, Derek is taking his mum to a
car in a wheelchair, apparently for insurance reasons. She gets a call from Judy,
one of the HR members of the company she works for: Dark Star Research, and if
that isn’t the most transparently obvious evil enterprise, I don’t know what
is.
Anyway,
they’re asking about the internship I skipped over in the last issue, but we
see the head of the company is well aware of his secret identity in the last
issue. We get 4 recap pages about Sideways origins and the book’s mission
statement, is framed as an episode of Stepping Out with Sideways but he has his
mask off at points, which he said he wasn’t going to do on camera.
#4 opens
with Derek showing Ernie news footage (on his new phone I guess) about a brawl
between the Supervillain Replicant and Hotspot. I haven’t seen hotspot in
comics well at all really, I’ve only ever seen him as a reserve on the animated
series, and he was only in a few episodes on one season. He’s agreed to meet
his mother for Lunch at 2 (we’ll get to this later) and he knows next to
nothing about Replicant. His plan is dumb and won’t work so I won’t explain it.
He just wants the publicity for his show.
Helen is
waiting, he was supposed to be here at one. So did Derek just make up two or
was there some miscommunication or, it really doesn’t matter since he won’t
make either of the times. She tells the secretary to hold her tongue and heads
up to see the boss, Ms. Dominus… they weren’t even trying with that name, were
they?
Ms Dominous
asks what makes Derek so special?
We cut to
Metropolis, Sideways arrives and sees the fight has intensified and he’s not
close enough to enact his stupid plan. And we Hotspot is getting his ass handed
to him. He rifts hotspot away from the villain as he’s about to finish him off.
They quickly quip how neither of them have heard of one-another before
Replicant catches up and grabs Sideways.
He’s
Replicant, and successfully replicates his powers. It’s now half one and Ms
Dominus is unimpressed, but it’s revealed here that Helen decided not to tell
him about the interview in fear of stressing him out, which I’m sure revealing
it to him at the last minute would absolutely do. Helen says that Derek entered
her life by chance but she always loved him. I’d like to see some more intel
about this, and the circumstances that lead to him being adopted but we’re now
at that point yet. Ms Dominus suggests putting a pin in the interview and
rescheduling when it’s more convenient, and we see she’s been conducting scans
of her throughout their talk.
Back at the
fight, Replicant doesn’t really know how to uses Sideways’ powers, Hotspot
grabs him but is soon thrown into Sideways, he fires a heat blast but Sideways
opens a rift and sends the flames right back at him, because somehow his suit
isn’t flameproof despite having the powers of Hotspot, he’s set on fire.
Sideways grabs a hose from a nearby fire truck and cools him off, hoping
someone gets it on camera.
Replicant
tries to wipe himself down, but he’s rifting at the same time. And it causes
his body to explode in such a way that pieces of himself are somehow in the
borders of pages earlier in the comic. Later on, Derek finds his adopted father
(I think) trying to set up a TV but it’s not set up yet. He asks about the
interview, when Derek realises that forgot about meeting his mother.
Unfortunately, people have linked the video of Replicant exploding to his site
and the internet is blaming him, Derek believes he should give up but when he
enters his bedroom we find Tempus Fuginaut cramped inside it. The dimensional
lines are breaking down fast and he says his training needs to begin. Wait,
WHAT? You were trying to kill him! Remember?
Helen stops
by Ms Dominus and thanks her again for postponing the interview. We also meet
Professor Portefoy, who is not fond of Helen at all. He ran the scans Ms
Dominus sent to him and they’ve come up clean, she was exposed to dark matter
in Metal, but it didn’t stick around. Meanwhile Sideways is very much still a
thing, she wants him found, and let nothing stand in his way.
So, how does
this new hero hold up, let’s break it down.
There are
positives than negatives. A few little glitches that occur from
miscommunications and those moments where they’re about as subtle as a brick
wall come to mind.
Also,
there’s the inconsistency of Tempus Fuginaut. In my opinion a character like
that works much better a little later on in the run, allowing Sideways to fully
test out and use his powers. Although, if they were just gonna do the training
route, some sort of indication in #2 would’ve been nice. Also, he looks really
silly and seeing him cramped into Derek’s bedroom is just funny.
Not much to
say about Darkstar yet, they’re transparently evil, and of course his adopted
mother works for them because they need a linking element to convince Derek to
come work for him. Speaking of Helen, thus far she’s my favourite character,
adopted parents rarely get exposure in Superhero titles, unless they’re super
hero’s themselves like Batman (pre-New52 Batman was Tim Drake’s adopted father,
don’t think that’s the case now with Tim’s parents somewhere alive and in
hiding but I digress)
Replicant is
an interesting choice of villain. He’s a Flash foe who doesn’t have a lot of
history and can be moulded to the story’s requirements and no-one will be that
up in arms about him being dead. Having Hotspot involves in the fight was an
odd choice, and one that I honestly didn’t care for but that’s because I kinda
like Hotspot and this was not a great showing as he got his ass kicked
repeatedly.
Killspeed
is… I wish they’d linked her to the goings on in Gotham rather than the
contrived relation to Central City. I guess it made sense given her power set
but this is supposed to be new reader friendly and this deliberately connects
it to a bit of continuity you do not need to know. It’s not confusing exactly
it’s just unnecessary.
Neither of
these villains feel like they’d ever be coming back, which is a shame.
Ernie is
also a decent character, she’s a good friend, they have some nice dialogue
together and she’s actively helpful. I like a good friend who knows his secret
but she has little depth beneath the surface that we’ve seen yet, there’s
potential to be explored in later issues.
Now we come
to Derek himself and here’s where I’m the most conflicted. He’s naïve and makes
mistakes both in his personal and superhero lives. But he’s sweet, tries to
make amends and even saves Hotspot and gets Killspeed outside to limit the
damage she could do. The problem is he’s also the creep who rifted in on Ernie
in the bathroom, takes no heed of the all-powerful god telling him he shouldn’t
be rifting and it’s causing damage, the guy who cut off the arm of one
supervillain and blew up another because he didn’t think doing any research was
important and missed a lunch appointment with his mum because he was too busy
seeking glory as sideways
I get the
approach of him thinking he could use his powers for internet fame. I don’t
even mind it in the first issue, it’s #4, where he acts like a f*cking moron
where things get dodgier. He’s still in his early stages, so I’m gonna give the
benefit of the doubt on some character flaws but it would be nice if it wasn’t
all we saw. He messed around, got himself injured and didn’t really have a
single success throughout the entire 4 issues. Bare in mind he didn’t beat
Killspeed, he just left her, minus an arm, to get arrested and Replicant
basically defeated himself.
The artwork,
aside the occasional goof is perfectly good, and well-suited to the title.
Rating
#1 8/10
#2 7.5/10
#3 7.5/10
#4 6/10
Overall
7.25/10
Recommendation: I’m gonna keep picking this
up for now, but approach with caution is my advice.
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