1 out of 5

Note: series re-titled to ‘…Legacy’ @ issue 34

Merry Moses and berries… what the fuck, Jai Nitz.  I’m digging the issues I have of ‘Paper Museum,’ I was super impressed by ‘Dream Thief,’ and the one issue of ‘Heaven’s Angels’ I have definitely makes me want to read more.  I realize those are all creator owned.  So the failure that was Nitz’s ‘Grimm’ mini, and now, a year’s worth of GH issues, leads me to jump to a conclusion: that Jai isn’t great at writing other people’s properties.  Perhaps horrible at it.  It’s true that I have no Green Hornet experience, so it’s …possible… that the incredible lack of grounding of any type during this jumbled story arc is part of the series’ MO, but if that’s the case then we’ll say that I’d give most GH arcs one star, unless matched with a writer who would know how to leverage such a style effectively.  Certainly Nitz ain’t it.  And if I’m not the fanbase that would appreciate such a style, then go ahead and underline some warning somewhere that makes it clear that this is my opinion.  And then fuck your mother.  (She also thought this run was tragic.)

Let me admit to a bias that I have: that Green Hornet forever feels like an imitation of other things.  Some Shadow, some Batman, and then baddies that nip from years of pulp and comics classics.  Perhaps the timelines show that Hornet came first, but unfortunately, I wasn’t aware of the character until after sources that made rather indelible impressions.  But let’s try to exist in a world where Hornet influenced everyone else; my response would still be something akin to thankfulness that other creators advanced / evolved the ideas.

For this era of Hornet, our main character is the son of the original, and his Kato is a woman, part of the Kato family – her father, I believe, having retired recently.  Hornet has a sidekick, recently deceased, so his sidekick’s sidekick has stepped up to take the mantle.  And he has his tech guy.  We’ll forgive the first couple issues’ sloppiness as Jai trying to establish his own story while allowing the threads that came before to run out.  This is pushing forgiveness, though, as the ‘parallel’ storylines of sidekick sidekick coming into his own as the newly minted ‘Scorch’ (I think, memories are blessedly fading fast) and new criminal in town’s son adjusting to life in private schools aren’t really parallel and are so poorly related to us as to be very, very truly meaningless.  These precursor issues end in Hornet and his team getting blown to bits in an explosion, and Scorch setting a tone as the new GH when he says eff it to old school hero rules and kills the criminal badguy.  Very quickly, ‘Hornet 2.0’ goes nutzo and starts offing baddies, and so it totally makes sense that he’d have no sense of loyalty when the original GH returns and they duke it out.

I’m tired.

GH 2.0 ‘dies,’ GH 1.0 establishes a new team and Nitz pretends like he mapped out a build-up to a battle with an evil scientist.  Hornet’s a womanizer, which, in lazy scripting, means there are plenty of random sex scenes because boys like tits, and Hornet’s a hopeful badass, so plenty of smirking panels of one-liners after a battle with an unthreatening opponent.  There’s negative characterization, a complete absence of understanding of how to wend an ongoing plot through one-shotty issues, and just a whole bunch of ugly, repetitive monologuing.

Ugh.  At points, Nitz slows down and we see glimmers of some of a big picture idea he was working on  – a mash-up of pulp overkill –  but it’s one page at the most before things come crashing down.  Otherwise, the only highlights are Jethro Morales’ large, fluid figures, reminding me of early 00s DC, but his style deserves a lighter tone than Nitz’s too-often melodramatic waxing.  And the pages are very widescreen, which exposes Morales lack of anything very interesting outside of these figures.  Two colorists during the course of the book, not much difference between them to a casual eye… dulled by Dynamite’s printing, though, which always renders pages looking rather sterile to me.

Lastly – the covers pissed me off.  Again, perhaps there’s a pulp tribute here in that the covers would depict things that don’t come close to happening in the book, but the general design didn’t suggest that, so I think it was indicative of the slapped-together nature of the series.  And the last issue’s cover – sure, go ahead and give away a major ‘reveal’ on the cover.  Who fucking cares.

Blech.