Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Midnighter 2021 Annual #1 Review




Time Is On Nobody's Side


Written By: Becky Cloonan, Michael W. Conrad
Art By: Michael Avon Oeming, Taki Soma, Dave Sharpe
Cover Price: $5.99
Release Date: August 31, 2021


The story that couldn't just be a backup is here with an Annual to finish our story or at least get it started for Future State..... or however that time travel paradox nonsense works. Previously, in our Action Comics Midnighter backup, we had Midnighter and Shilo Norman fighting the forces of Andrej Trojan.... which were just essential vehicles with faces stretched over them and when things started to look grim, Apollo showed up to save the day. Let's see if Apollo continues to save the day and if the time travel bits of this book becomes more than a headache. Let's check it out.


So to stop Future State, where Andrej Trojan not only converts the people of Metropolis into nano-tech cyborgs but also creates a lab next to Warworld that is developing a substance that not only can kill a Kryptonian but also all the other meat-bags on Earth that he doesn't like, Midnighter has come back in time to put an end to Andrej before he can even begin and if you've been reading the Midnighter backups in Action Comics..... Well, you'll be getting a lot more of the same here, where Midnighter and Shilo Norman fight bad guys before going after Andrej Trojan in a new location where they continue to fight bad guys. Essentially we just move to three different locations to do more of the same but this time we have Midnighter tell Apollo the truth about who he is and where he comes from...... Ultimately though, this reveal doesn't do much.




Now by the end with the final showdown between Midnighter and Andrej Trojan it feels like a big deal with brains downloading all willy-nilly wherever they need to be like Brainiac but only less cool, but because of the art and the forced Mother-Box cloning scenario that doesn't do anything but confuse me and get the other Midnighter back from the future, this whole finale scenario just leaves me shaking my head at what this creative team was trying to put across other than everything we've been dealing with in this story doesn't matter.




All in all, I'm not a fan of the art of this issue and during times of action, a lot of what's going on is lost or just seems strange, which is partially due to the story that we have here. As for the story overall, it's a lot of the same that we've had previously, where Midnighter and company are just simply fighting and where I thought that the relationship between Midnighter and Apollo would be the saving grace once we got the original Lucas back, this too felt hollow and ultimately the overall story's premise didn't seem to be fully realized beyond the bootstrap paradox concept that we started with. Hopefully, with what's going on in Superman and the Authority there will be something in that series that brings more clarity to this one but for what we got here, this Annual and conclusion to our story was just a disappointment where nothing was achieved.  


Bits and Pieces:


While I was looking forward to the romance angle of Apollo and Midnighter being the thing that brought some actual heart to this story, it really felt like an afterthought to more punching and shooting that just has become monotonous in this overall tale and this Annual didn't do much to make this story feel worthwhile and the art remains something that I'm not a fan of at all.


3.5/10

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