Deadman #1 Review and **SPOILERS**

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No Dignity in Death

Written, Drawn and Colored By: Neal Adams 

Lettered By: Clem Robins 

Cover By: Neal Adams 

Cover Price: $3.99 

On Sale Date: November 1, 2017

**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE BOTTOM**

Oh boy…ohboyohboyohBOY! Ever since we closed on Neal Adams’ The Coming of the Superman, I have been dying to read his next vanity project. And here it is! Of course, while Neal drew Superman plenty of times in the 1970s, he is really known for his work on Deadman. I think it’s because the character lends itself to his long, tortured-looking faces. And I’m sure the art will be swell—but I’m looking for the bonkers comic book madness! If you want to hop on this ride, take a big swig of cough syrup and dive right into my review of Deadman #1, as follows!

Explain It!

Listen up, ya mortal jerkbags: the afterlife fucking suuucks. The only reason you have time to waste is because you have temporal space to begin with; in the hereafter, everything is forever. Literally. That’s why Boston Brand is in constant anguish, whether he’s after his murderer, Hook, or ordering a BLT at Katz’s. Here’s the straight dope, kids: you don’t read a Neal Adams comic book, you luxuriate in it. You dive right in and wallow among those deft lines and wild perspectives and if you start getting confused then just shake it off, pal…enjoy the show for once in your four-dollar life.

Seems Commissioner Gordon has become an acting ambassador for the United States, on a tour of nuclear sites around the world. That sentence raises many more questions than it should answer, but the point is moot because Batman shows up, disguised as Gordon, and takes over for a little while. He’s got the skinny that something strange is afoot at a particular plant, something that includes Hook, the guy that killed Deadman and for whom Boston Brand roams the earth evermore. Or something like that. Look, I’m just trying to make sense of this thing. It’s not like it comes with a roadmap.

What’s afoot at said plant is that Hook has a cabal of hazmat suit-wearing assassins ready to take down Commissioner Gordon, which is about as likely as your neighbor taking down his Christmas lights before May of next year. Unless he’s got those projecting lights I see advertised on television lately. Do you see what I’m getting at, son? It’s not about projecting lights, it’s about Deadman projecting himself into various members of the Wayne family to give Bruce a ton of shit for killing the guy that bullied him into being a great martial artist. And it’s about Bruce sending him off to Hong Kong just because it’s good to be a Wayne in Gotham City.

This story…it’s wild, man. It will take you places. Into Aquaman back-ups and four-part miniseries and prestige-format stories of comic bookery’s distant past, into the comic boxes on the lower, darker shelves of your local comic book shop. Then…will you comprehend? No, we can never fully comprehend. But we can grow ever more confused, and that is a form of understanding.

Bits and Pieces:

Only those hep to the jive of a Neal Adams solo jam will enjoy this, but BOY will you enjoy it! The art seems tighter than usual, but best of all is the mind-bending story that neatly contains a full history of Deadman. Now to get all that into one comic book is a feat in and of itself.

7/10