Wait, Why is 'Seven' Being Thrown Around, There's NINE Of Them
Ok, I was not expecting much from this, of the entire Third Wave I was least excited about this series; even of both new waves combined. The busy grim n' gritty gun filled cover didn't exactly inspire much confidence either. This basically looked to be The Expendables if set in the DC Universe.
After the Zero issue, my hopes are a little higher, but I can't exactly say if my hypothesis was right or wrong. All we really got in this issue was the setup for the team, and their general mission statement. There was a framing device, and then a ton of small segments where each recruit is approached by Dinah Drake and Kurt Lance. It makes this issue feel a little lacking, since we only get 2-4 pages of each character as they're brought in. It's enough to get you a general sense of each of them, but leaves the whole issue feeling like a big teaser.
This issue has a lot of nice tidbits for readers like myself reading most of the New 52. When did Dinah become Black Canary, and does she have her powers in her Team 7 days? How much does Caitlin Fairchild know about her father's government work? How did the government let Grifter slip through their fingers? Lots of nice juicy ties to various threads in the DCU.
The artwork is nice and definitely suits the tone. It certainly helps keep me from thinking the tone will be one of 'DCU Expendables.' I don't think this is Jesus Merion's best, but it's got a very versatile style to fit all the characters, and the whole general feel.
In Conclusion: 3.5/5
Overall I'm not completely sold on this. This was an extensive introduction to a group of characters not extremely fleshed out beyond general archetypes. There's also just too many of them, and they don't really stick out without any major recognizable features. My brain was spinning by the end, and I barely remembered half the people he had met so many. And again, this was essentially an extended teaser, so I'm not yet sure what the feel is going to be like. But on the other hand, I couldn't really find much that was genuinely 'bad.'
