City Boy #1 – Greg Pak, Writer; Minkyu Jung, Artist; Sunny Gho, Colorist
Ray – 8.5/10
Ray: The third of this month’s original launches featuring Asian heroes by top creative teams, this is definitely the most unique new character. We first met Cameron, aka City Boy, in one of the Lazarus Planet one-shots where we were introduced to his rather complex series of powers that allow him to find a city’s secrets and hidden objects. But a flashback that opens this issue reveals he has a traumatic past involving his mother abandoning him, and that leads him to being rather closed-off to people—whether it’s family, or an eccentric homeless man named Fujimoto who seems to think they’re friends. As he returns to Metropolis, Cameron quickly runs afoul of a rather cruel crimelord who things the young hero is looking to use his abilities to harvest goods from the city—and wants to be cut in. This villain, Boss Chung, is a bit of a stock character but definitely has an air of menace about him.
This issue is rather flashback-heavy, and we get to see Cameron get his powers via an experiment gone wrong that sees a mad scientist accidentally beam the spirit of the city into his brain—something that gives him incredible abilities, but also leads to intense trauma. Greg Pak has written a lot of young heroes over the years, but Cameron has more edge and more pain than many of those lead characters. He’s an interesting lead and his powers are genuinely unique, but one issue in his world seems sort of closed off as well. He doesn’t have much in the way of a supporting cast, nor does he seem really interested in getting one. There are the most unanswered questions in this book of the whole wave, but Pak is a very talented writer and he’s set up something interesting here. Cameron’s powers alone are enough to make for some incredible story opportunities, and the new villain at the end shows promise for upping the threat level.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
