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Dec 3, 2020

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2108: Next Men #2, March 1992

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I'm having to rethink my relationship with John Byrne. I've often found the arrogance I've perceived in interviews as very off-putting, a case of an artist buying their own hype, as I've noted before. And I do think that there's some of that there. On the other hand, again as I've noted, Byrne is a fantastic artist, and given the space that a creator-owned book allows, his writing's not too shabby either. I'm definitely on my way to being sucked into this story.

One thing I'm really appreciating is the Next Mens' inability to accept that the world they find themselves in is, in fact, the more real one. And this isn't communicated in exposition, but rather in the characters attempting something odd that, from their reactions, you can tell worked during their time in The Greenery.

There's also a much larger story going on, which is kind of cool. Often you'll have origin stories like this and then the characters just fuck off and become superheroes. This story is starting to read a lot less like superhero fiction and more like science fiction, so we'll see where things go as we progress. I've been surprised to this point. Hopefully that will continue.

More to follow.

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