Dr. No
A few months after release, my local comic book shop were trying to get rid of extra copies of this series and were selling them at a greatly reduced price. I only paid the equivalent of 50 cents for this issue… and I still feel like I wasted my money. I can only imagine how I would have felt if I had paid full price!
The story is meandering and tiresome. The overall concept and plot, although not great, is quite interesting. However the script and the pace in which it’s told is slow to the point where I just wanted to stop reading. In issue #1 they changed Dr. Manhattan’s powers and the plot in this issue largely revolves around that. That in itself makes the story feel somewhat redundant. There are a number of pages where Dr. Manhattan / Jon Osterman chooses one option or another and each choice leads to different events happening. These events are depicted by what I call “lazy art”. The backgrounds and most of the characters (apart from one) are exactly the same. So basically the artist just used the same panels again and changed one of the characters in it. In another occurrence even one character didn’t change and only the dialogue boxes where altered. This happens over four different pages. I understand the script obviously called for this but someone with the talent of Adam Hughes should surely be able to depict these events in a more creative and satisfying way. It really feels like the reader is being cheated.
Other than the glaring insult mentioned above, the art by Adam Hughes and colours by Laura Martin are actually quite spectacular! Hell the book is worth buying for that fantastic main cover itself. Overall I'd only recommend this book to die hard Dr. Manhattan fans that have to buy anything he appears in. If you’re not one of these people, save yourself some boredom and stay away... Unless you're happy to pay for the cover alone of course!
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