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Jul 27, 2015

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 153: Adventurers v.2 #0, July 1988


And back to Adventurers again. I talked a bit last time I started reviewing this series about the problems of the zero issue, the uses to which it can be put. I think this particular zero issue is well-deployed, offering a bit of history that, I'm assuming, adds to the ongoing story, but doesn't interrupt it. As with last time, this issue was released part way through the main story (issues 4 and 5, to be specific), so I'm assuming that the characters and setting whose origins we witness here have been introduced there. I guess I'll find out as I read the rest of volume 2. My run of the second volume is slightly more comprehensive than the first, so I'm interested to see how the story hangs together.

My only criticism of this tale, which is a more solid comic than much of the previous volume, is that it falls into the trap of its predecessors in having no decent characters to cleave to. I know this is meant to be the origin story of the villains of the volume, and they're ostensibly a better nemesis than the incarnated god that takes center stage in this story, but they're still despicable people. Perhaps it's just a matter of taste, but I need to have at least one character, major or minor, who I can identify with, and in this issue there were none. Again, as with the last time, I perhaps should have read this issue not in numerical order, but publication order, so that I would see this as merely a side story of the villains of the piece, an aside, rather than as a story contained all in itself. As a side story, I can read the issue from the vantage point of having experienced characters that are not self-serving religious fanatics, but are opposed to those religious fanatics. Perhaps from now one when it comes to zero issues, I'll have to figure out at what point in a story they are published, and read them accordingly.

More Adventurers tomorrow, and for the next few days until we get through the series. See you tomorrow.

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