Static Shock #8

For those of you who ever wondered where I went for the past *mumbles* months, I shall direct you to the location of a non-stopping cat with pop-tart body, flying through space with a rainbow wake and proclaim myself champion of “longest watching of it ever”. For those of you who didn’t care “why no love guys? Why no love?” But with my temporary return (the “nyan” beckons me still) I’ve decided to look at the final issue of the 2011-2012 “new 52” series of “Static Shock”.

In my usual review style this second paragraph would involve me saying what’s occurred in the first few pages of the issue, like a free taster to get you to buy the issue, but considering the type if issue this is it would seem inappropriate as that first part of the issue that I like to spoil would be the only “action” oriented part of this issue. The rest is back story. That’s right folks, 8 issues in (not to mention the end of the series) we finally get our static “origin story” and back-story to events that occurred prior to the DC re-launch and statics move from Dakota to New York. So I’m now just going to jump ahead and go into the working details.

So as mentioned this is an issue giving us the back-story of our young hero. Now this is good, as there were a bunch of us (myself included) who knew little to nothing about the character, par from what was shown in the static shock cartoon (which I loved), who required a little bit more information on this character and his back-story. Now the negative to this is that this should have occurred in the FIRST ISSUE of the series, not the last. Many of us were confused when this series started in September with questions such as how come Sharon his sister has a clone? Why is he working in S.T.A.R. labs? Why is he and his family in New York? It put us off the series and alienated us from a character, who despite having a cartoon series made after him, readers are unaware of. Had this issue come out sooner rather than now it could have helped save the series or at least given it a bit more life. What’s also present in this issue is that school life that Virgil is meant to have, you know as most teenage super-heroes have, which was either skimmed over briefly in this series as a “yeh, and he’s in school”, or just completely ignored. So It’s nice to see him FINALY being a teenager and going to school (and I never thought that I’d ever write those words) to see that other civilian part of his life. Unfortunately the school is used as a setting for the back-story, so no happy friend times there with “would have, could have, but didn’t” secondary characters that this series seriously needed. As I mentioned earlier the first part of this issue was the “action” oriented part of the issue, and the first few pages can be seen on the DC website if you want to take a look. But what I see in these first pages is a story that should have been that was thrown to the side for a more complicated, confusing story involving the piranha and the various other goons that made up the first 6 issues. These first few pages showed how it could have been a short story about teenage problems (you know, because that’s what our character is…. I know we might have forgotten that, but he is. I mean he did turn up in the teen titans that one time) of bullying, not fitting in and just wanting it all to disappear. It was a story that could have used the school setting to its advantage, having Virgin interact with those non-existent secondary characters to see what they knew about the girl and so on. It was a missed opportunity that was just thrown in at the last second. Now I don’t think that I have to comment on the writing of this issue, or this series, because our lovely site admins did that already making an entire post about the creative issues (or lack of creativity) that was occurring with this series. The writing is not what it could have been, and that’s all I really need to say, check out that post to find out more. As far as the art is concerned I would say that McDaniel’s art is “ok” at it’s best, but can also be considered ugly at its worst. It’s not my favourite kind of art style and personally I think that it ages static more than he should be aged (compare this to the Virgil art done in Teen Titans #6). Guy Majors colouring in the issue is varied, with the bright colours of the present contrasting the murkier colours of the flashbacks, which is nice, but I’d have also liked to see some murkier colours in the present day setting, just to make the city feel more alive rather than sterile (issue pun intended).

Overall this issue felt like it should have been an “issue #0” rather than what it is. It explains the much needed back-story and also showed us a story that could have been which really only hurts this series more as it seems we got the butt end of the stories this time round. If you’re curious about static shock I’d either advise that you go and try to find older trade backs of the character during his milestone days rather than pick up this issue or this series. I would not advice you to pick the series up as it just shows that there were good ideas being thrown around but instead of getting them we got something that confused us instead. But if you would like to pick it up, and you haven’t picked up any of the previous issues, id advice you to just wait until June to pick up the trade paper backs of issues 1-8 in Static Shock: Super charged. So to conclude I give Static Shock #8 -

2/5

Now I’m pretty sure (or hoping) that we’ll soon see Static appear in the pages of Teen Titans once more, and that he’ll get another series soon down the line with a creative team thank knows what their doing (and not just in the creating of the series but also the idea of who’s the writer and who’s not). But until then lets just remind ourselves shall we: