Motherlands #1 – Si Spurrier, Writer; Rachael Stott, Artist; Felipe Sobriero, Colorist
Ratings:
Ray – 6/10
Corrina: Too Much For Me
WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW
Ray: Si Spurrier, the writer of the futuristic dimension-hopping bounty hunter comic Motherlands #1, is one of the most varied writers in the industry, frequently doing mind-bending, complex originals for Boom and other companies. Some, like Godshaper (set in a world where everyone has a personal God) are bizarre on the right side of brilliant. Others are just bizarre.
One issue in, this new Vertigo debut feels like it’s going to fall on the latter side. Set in a world where pathways between parallel worlds have been created, it opens as a little girl named Tabitha is pulled out of her elementary school class so she and her domineering celebrity mother can be told that Tabitha’s little brother has been kidnapped – by someone with the face of the boy’s father who took him out of the dimension. Thirty years later, Tabitha is a brawny, heavily armored bounty hunter who tracks down escapees across dimensions. The action segment that kicks off on page three is the issue’s finest moment, as it gives us a great look at how dimensional travel works.
Unfortunately, Tabitha is still sort of a stock character – your typical beefy, brutal bounty hunter, with the only unique twist being that this is a type of female character we rarely see. Her quarry, meanwhile, is disgustingly crude in a way that mainly seems designed to show off the issue’s mature rating. We do learn from him a good deal about Tabitha’s mother and her role in the story, though. From what we can tell, this is a world filled with aliens, alternate humans, and everything in between, making the normal humans on the world something of an underclass – which Tabitha is completely unfazed by. However, the reveal of exactly who she’s supposed to be chasing brings her to the retirement home where her mother has been hiding out – with a bizarre new character design – as a mother/daughter bounty hunt across the multiverse begins. The cliffhanger, though, is telegraphed since page two. There’s potential here, but the issue is bogged down in coarse dialogue and so far undistinguished characters.
Corrina: There’s little about Tabitha that interests me. She’s one of those female characters where that is gender-swapped for a stock male character without anything else changing to make her interesting. This issue reads relentlessly extreme and overly macho–which could be fun but the humor isn’t working for me.
But fans of Spurrier may well be interested.
To find reviews of all the DC issues, visit DC This Week.
Disclaimer: GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
