Titan Books: Death Sentence

Writer: Monty Nero
Artist: Mike Dowling
Full Colour
Hard cover
192 pages
US Trade size
£16.99
ISBN: 9781782760085

The book blurb seems quite straight-forward:

What would you do with superpowers – and six months to live?

That's the dilemma facing three people who've contracted the G+ Virus, a terrifying new STD.

What can graphic designer Verity, failing indie guitarist Weasel and roguish media personality Monty do in the time they have left? Fade away – or go out in a blaze of glory?

By turns funny, dark, sad and spectacular, Death Sentence is an emotional thrillride through celebrity, loss, passion and creativity. It's the jaw-dropping next stage in super-powered story-telling!

Packed with unforgettable shocks, quotable dialogue and the character finds of a generation, this is an unmissable debut by two striking and confident new voices!

Firstly, I think I've made it more than clear that I have absolutely no interest in what other reviewers say or write.  I do not jump on to band-wagons to desperately seem hip and cool.  "Fresh" "A masterwork" and a load of other quotes are fired at me and after reading this book it really does appear to be a case of people wanting to seem hip and trendy.

There is NOTHING wrong with the artwork. I like it. And this being a Titan Book (a trade of the Titan Comics series) the quality of print and design is top-notch.

Now, "original"/"fresh"/"A masterwork"/"brilliantly original"....not really.

Back in the 1980s a little snotty up-start who thought he was going to be the "next great thing" in comics took a public swipe at me and he thought my work was "typical super hero story" and I challenged him -publicly- to come up with a wholly original super hero story by the time of the next Westminster Comic Mart.  Two months.  What happened? Nothing. He hid behind his pals and is now an unremembered wannabe.

The point is this: in science fiction, horror, crime or super heroes genres there are only so many scenarios but the way you use those genres and scenarios is what is important. Monty Nero wrote the story he wrote which is typical of the last 15-20 years: lots of "outrageous" sex scenes, expletives and so on. But it was in no way original or ground-breaking.

Secret government agencies capturing and training -or trying to- those with psychic or supernatural powers is nothing new.  In films we had the 1978 Kirk Douglas movie The Fury.  In comics the 1979-1980 2000 AD series The Mind Of Wolfie Smith comes to mind.  Then we had Zenith in 2000 AD but in that the maniac was Richard Branson someone who looked like a certain money-grabbing ****** rather than Russel Brand someone who looked like a certain British media anti-hero. Of course from 1986-1989(?) Marvel published a comic about people who were given various powers -which eventually killed them (and even then the idea was not new). I refer to Strikeforce Morituri. And there were lots of elements that reminded me of Moore's Marvelman/Miracleman.

In fact, Death Sentence left me a bit bored as a story and there were points where it felt like the writer (I do not know what the writer was thinking, I'm going by the story) thought "Uh, yeah, a few more panels of Brand Monty over-indulging or having sex!"  So much space seemed wasted on trying to be a bit edgy or controversial.  drugs, sex, drugs, violence, sex....characterisation suffered though there were a few pages when I thought I was going to see an expansion of characterisation, but it never happened.

It was interesting at points but never ground-breaking and certainly not rediscovering the super hero genre.

If you like this sort of thing -fair enough.  To me it was just a few good points, nice art but....meh.