Let's Talk About Mr Terrific #2
In our last installment Michael Holt got possess by an unknown force and puts him in a position to use his Quake preventer Machine in reverse, creating a massive earthquake that might destroy all of California, what will happen now?
Spoilers
MISTER TERRIFIC #2 by Eric Wallace and Gianluca Gugliotta
As we left off the last issue, Michael Holt is somehow possess into activating his Quake Machine, also named C.E.E.N., provoking an earthquake that seems to be destroying everything, at the start of this issue Michael begins to fight off this malignant influence by shouting "GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"
Everyone is in panic, Jamal read the console of CEEN and he finds out that in just 5 minutes the machine will destroy everything in a 10 mile radius and after that, and extintion level Earthquake of 13.5 in Richter scale or even higher
For the record, the strongest Earthquake recorded in the world happen in 1960 in Chile and only reach a 9.5, but even more as i was investigating the Richter scale, the math involve on it is more complicated than that and something also recorded is a 12.55 in the Chicxulub crater, basically the crater left by the meteor that killed the dinosaurs
so in summary, The Quake machine that Michael invented will more likely destroy all mankind!
Karen tries to help Michael but he is helping himself by rebooting his own brain using his T-sphere. He explains that something tried to take over his mind but the T-Spheres prevented that, unfortunately not enough to prevent him from activating a doomsday device, but luckily while he was rebooting his brain he atleast manage to hear out Jamal saying how screwed they all are so he moves on quickly inside the C.E.E.N. processing chamber to stop the annihilating quake.
Apparently this machine that is SOO EASILY turn into a world killer weapon needs a very specific set of procedures in order to be turn off, it just cannot be as easy as plug the powercord or reboot a computer, no, Michael explains that he needs to create a SONIC BLACK HOLE, in order to permanently stop the quake on its tracks, and again, they only have like 4 mins
and he does!
By creating this weird circle thingy =>
with the help of Karen.
I knew you could do it =D
=/
Ok here the problem with this whole situation, its so ridiculous and so forced on its pace that is almost impossible to feel the slightless tension at all on the scene, anyone can just easily wonder that if Michael could transform his machine so simply into a weapon of mass destruction so anyone, which makes the sole existence of this machine questionable, but even more is the fact that Its so easy to activate and so hard to deactivate, why? One can think this because as Michael explains the function of the machine, it seems like its generating the quake, its just a matter to make it stop, but Wallace goes into so much detail to sustain this situation that it just doesnt work, If you need to explain it with so much detail for people to understand it then you are doing something wrong, its not like is necessary to look down to the audience but we as readers understand that whatever is making this machine works is completely fake on its science, so there is no point to it at all.
With the crisis averted there is still one lingering problem, Michael Holt just publicaly tried to murder a member of the US Senate and created a machine that can easily destroy the West Cost in a matter of minutes and possibly the whole entire world, so what with happen with that?
But ofcourse!, he is just a victim of mind control, wasnt that obvious for everyone in the room? and that doomsday machine that Michael invented, completely forgotten, lets just pretend it never happen
Ok, being fair, the next panel tell us that several hundred people were affected just like michael, but the big problem of the situation is they were all random attacks, which also made the past scene just a huge coincidence since Michael wasnt just personally attacked to destroy the world.
Since Michael was not the only attacked and none of the others victimsrecover cause Michael had his T-Spheres he decides to find whoever caused this like any hero would do
and we cut to another scene to meet the main menace
the sole culprit of this situation and the cause of so much suffering and anguish to the good people of California
...
MEGAMIND
...
ok its not Megamind
Its this other blue dude from the cover
His name is Brainstorm but i will keep calling him Megamind cause its actually easier to do
Megamind exposit that what he is really doing is feeding from other people's minds, and his own ability is increasing more and more so soon he will be able to feed on a mass scale, and by feeding he will achieve Godhood
...
this plans sounds familiar
nevermind
The next scene we get Michael reunited with his board, they are worried for Michael cause he just had a near death experience but most of all they are worried that Michael doesnt have a successor.
???
And Michael responds on how important he is for HOLT Industries and without him the company would be ruin
ok, I will move ahead a little in the future but this subplot, never really pays off, If Michael is so important on his own, how would a successor change anything at all , the idea is that he needs to do this to preserve the future of the company after he is gone, but he doesnt need to be gone soon, and in the case that something happens to him and he didnt had an "heir" then i guess it would be up to his own board of directors to choose one or take care of the company themselves, so why press on this?
Aleeka has a moment with Michael in which she tries to convince him to choose one but he is too depress to react.
We cut again to 2 persons, Donald and another guy isnt name, Donald is part of the Holt Industries Board, and the no name guy works for something call the Circle Revolution, and they are conspiring to make take over Holt Ind.
We cut AGAIN to Michael doing an Scan on himself with the help of his A.I. NOLA and with this he finds out the reason of why so many ppl turn insane like he did, he is doing this while talking with Karen via holograms(what? you dont have one of those in your house?) and we find out that Karen have no idea that Michael is a superhero. He suits up and leaves throught his portal on the 9th dimension while he travels on it a misterious set of eyes are lurking
In the meantime he arrives at a random Mall in Los Angeles, why there, cause he detects some random anomaly that indicates that Megamind might attack here, but first he needs to give some autographs
Now considering that this place full of kids might be attacked by an evil person who is using mindwaves that would turn them into slaves and/or sociopaths, there is just no nesesity at all to alarm them
Once Megamind attacks Michael uses his T-Spheres to create a "dampering field" that will prevent any effect on this. This makes Megamind appear for the first time. Now imagine that you are in a mall and suddenly you are victim of one of those neural attacks that you see on the news and then you see this blue guy floating in the middle of the mall talking to a superhero and most likely the 2 are going to start a fight, you run from there? yes, well thats weird cause here they DIDNT RUN! This the problem with this situation, Michael knows that an attack is imminent and he doesnt bother to warn anyone, to evacuate the mall? maybe he didnt want to create panic but he could had put the dampering field before it started, he could had told everyone to run for safety once Brainstorm appeared since he knows what he can do and that he is dangerous, but he doesnt, even more why is Brainstorm here? up to this point all the attacks have been random, if he is here does it means that he was targetting this mall, why? and once it was stop why confront Michael, he could easily move to another location, this is the problem with a pacing that is too fast, we dont know anything for sure cause we havent been given enough time to assimilate the problem.
Megamind increases the power of his "whatever" and turns everyone in the Mall into his slaves
And the comic ends with him ordering the masses to Kill Mister Terrific.
THE END
This comic is confusing
It feels more like 2 comics in one, the first half with Michael in a challenge to save the world and the other one with 3 or 4 subplots that are just hinted, and then villain attacks at the end.
The Earthquake plot is just very blandly executed, It just meant to be an action sequence but without any action and tension, I dont know if Wallace was assuming that ppl wouldnt notice that a 13.5 richter is completely unrealistic or if he was just playing silly with it, its just telling us that this can end the whole world on a situation that the hero himself put in action only to make him be a hero and the plot still has this gigantic hole on the sole creating of the machine, Why would Michel make this think so it can be turn into a WMD?
Its just ignore and forgotten like it wasnt important, and it works in that sense cause it wasnt important at all.
The subplots are meant to be an story that will develop later int the future, but here there are too many taking away a lot of space from the same story, we get a full spread of Michael going through the 9th dimension only for a little panel to show us that there is a creature living there looking at him, this might sound interesting but it just feels like it doesnt belong here, and could had been hinted later or not at all they just takeout 2 pages of the book and leave nothing useful behind and the same goes for most of them.
and Finally the attack of Brainstorm has all those problems that i pointed out, we get an exposition that is too quick about why and how he is doing this but its just boring
we dont feel an emotional response to this attacks cause we never see the thousands of victims and we are just told about it, and the people attacked in the mall are more presented as comically mindless zombies and out of place with the whole super intelligent sociopaths that we were presented until now.
I think the art improved a little but it still presents problems and it has this thing where it uses close shots of everyone's face for no reason at all
overall a little improvement over the last issue, is not offensive but is still very boring
I give it a 3 out of 10
End of Blog Post
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