Descent
I never read any of the original Charlton Comics' characters. I'd never heard of them before DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths. The characters that appealed to me were Blue Beetle, The Question and Captain Atom. Even though I only followed a few issues of Ted Kord's series - I don't think I ever followed Dennis O'Neil's The Question, or Captain Atom - the characters still appealed to me. From what I'd read, The Question and Captain Atom did quite well. Not sure about Nightshade, Peacemaker, Judmaster or Peter Cannon - who is not part of this series, due to copyright issues. I'd seen Captain Atom as part of the Justice League. Maybe I'm wrong but his powers and abilites are a kinda like Firestorm. I could be wrong. Re-reading this mini-series reminds me a lot of DC rolling out the Impact Universe of heroes. The Comet, The Fly and Fireball were the characters that appealed to me there.
I can't figure this series out. Bob Layton's Iron Man was phenomenal. Dick Giordano knows these characters from having worked on them at Charlton. This series has everything going for it. But there is just something not right going on here and I can't put my finger on it. Maybe it's just that it is so big, so huge, so broad, that it is spread too thin. The appearance of the Justice League just seems gratuitous. Avatar is so powerful. But Captain Atom is so much more powerful that the only use for him so far is to power Avatar's scheme, and so he is a prisoner. The Degrees of Seperation on how these characters are brought together is so thin and flimsy, it almost needs to be re-thought. There's the obvious "traitor in our midst".
I'm a huge James Bond fan. What I like about the James Bond films, besides the gadgets and the babes, are the villains. Magneto, Dr. Doom, The Green Goblin and Lex Luthor could be phenomenal James Bond villains. My favorite James bond villains were the classics - Dr. No and Blofeld, along with a few of the ones from the Brosnan films. Avatar seems a bit unrealistic.
The cool thing about this series so far is the covers. Each issue fits together as a poster. Nice!