2 out of 5

After its Charlton Comics origins as, according to wiki, a more light-hearted hero in the vein of Plastic Man, Nicola Cuti’s and Joe Staton’s energy-fueled, morphing hero E-Man found its way to First, where writer Martin Pasko would turn the title into more straight-out parodies of concepts and culture.

Issue 7 would seem to be wrapping up some various threads – seeing as how the first 10 pages are all recap – while maybe riffing on evangelicalism, since our lead baddie is revealed to be a fear-gobbling villain from the stars, hiding in the guise of a religious leader.  Pasko’s script is way overstuffed to catch us up on this, and, more importantly, pretty unfunny – the random asides characters make throughout qualify as dad humor – leaving Joe Staton (with nicely balanced inks from Rich Burchett and bright colors from Wendy Fiore) to similarly overstuff the pages with somewhat confusing layouts.  His characters and action are lively, it’s just not that much fun to read; letterer Ken Bruzenak seems at a loss as to how to order things as well, so the book just amounts to a lot of blabber until we’re caught up and on the other side of things, with only a few pages left to go.  At that point, the Silver Age-y charm of the book shines through, but it’s definitely too little too late.

Also includes a one page hostess ad parody from Mike Baron, starring Nexus, which is why I bought this.  It’s… one page, but it’s delightfully corporation-snipey and random.