Generations: Shattered #1 – Dan Jurgens, Andy Schmidt, Robert Venditti, Writers; Ivan Reis/Joe Prado/Scott Hanna, Fernando Pasarin/Oclair Albert, Aaron Lopresti/Matt Ryan, Emanuela Lupacchino/Wade Von Grawbadget, Bernard Chang, Yanick Paquette, Kevin Nowlan, Dan Jurgens/Klaus Janson, Paul Pelletier/Sandra Hope, John Romita Jr/Danny Miki, Doug Braithwaite, Rags Morales, Mike Perkins, Artists; Hi-Fi, Colorists
Ray – 8/10
Ray: Dan Jurgens has a DC career spanning more than thirty years, so it’s only fitting he comes back for a tribute to DC’s long history before the next era. Along with writers Andy Schmidt and Robert Venditti, and a massive all-star team of artists, he tells a wild and crazy time-travel adventure with ties to some of his original ’90s comics. It all starts with a wave of time-erasing white matter hitting all worlds at once, including that of Kamandi. As the last boy alive runs from both the wave and angry bats, he’s saved by an elderly Booster Gold and gifted his glove—which contains the mind of Skeets—and sent catapulting through time to collect a team of fellow heroes who can stop this menace to the timeline in its tracks.
From there, this mega-sized issue becomes a tale of jumping from famous DC story to famous DC story to pick up other heroes. Recruits include Starfire from her original New Teen Titans era, Steel from shortly after his debut in Reign of the Supermen, Batman from 1939 (as seen in the preview to this story from Detective Comics #1027), Sinestro from when he was a Green Lantern, a younger Booster Gold, a Superboy from the Legion of Super-Heroes and a pre-Dr. Light Kimiyo Hoshi. It’s an intriguing group—and one that doesn’t get along immediately, especially with Sinestro being just short of a villain even now and Booster being… well, Booster. It doesn’t take long for chaos to find them.
The Linear Men, the time cops from many of Jurgens’ famous stories, are back, and they’ve been corrupted. The choice of the main villain here is interesting—he’s a fairly obscure rogue, but one who fits this theme perfectly and has been set up for something big for a while. While the story has a bit too much exposition and seems mostly to be setting us up for the next chapter, it’s a great flashback to some classic DC stories you might have forgotten. It also features some amazing artwork that does a great job of capturing the feel of those classic stories. I’m not sure what the process that the three writers went through for this script was, but it’s turned into a pretty entertaining throwback.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
