albrown's Blog

White Tiger #1

(Fri 11/17/2006 10:51am)

So, the new White Tiger - the niece of the original, who was killed during Bendis's Daredevil run - gets her own limited series.  All part of Marvel's plan to get more chicks into their universe, now that they've finally figured out that comics fans like chicks.  (They're also trying to get more Hispanic characters in, which is laudable.)

But is it good?  Not really.  It's amateurish, to be honest.  Writer Tamora Pierce, making her first foray into the comics realm, is either dumbing herself down for what she thinks is a ten-year-old audience, or she hasn't read a comic book since the 80's, or she just can't get a handle on the pacing.  Or all of the above.  The story moves awkwardly, and there are inexplicable lines like "You have the email address for a laptop I have that the Bureau doesn't know about."  Like each laptop comes with its own unique email address. 

To make matters worse, halfway through the story our hero Angela Del Toro discovers the identity of the new villain she's been tracking, an updated version of King Cobra with...uh, super smell powers.  "Yeah, this is the guy," she says.  But we have no idea what she's talking about.  We've seen her take down some random hoods at this point.  We've never heard of this guy before.  What's she talking about?

There's a mildly cute costume-buying scene, and a girl-bonding scene with the Black Widow that completely misses her character, and a passable fight scene near the end, but in general, this is a missable book.  Marvel's gonna have to do better than this if they want some fresh chick blood infused into their world.