The Answer
Writer: Dennis Hopeless
Artist: Mike Norton
Colorist: Mark Englert
Genre: Superhero, Action/Adventure
Publication Date: January 23, 2013
Dark Horse
Format: FC, 24 pages
Price: $3.99
UPC: 7 61568 22480 1 00111
Devin McKenzie is an insomniac librarian with a knack for solving puzzles. The Answer! is a masked crime fighter with a giant exclamation point on his face. Aside from a penchant for late nights, they share nothing in common . . . until both become embroiled in a deadly mystery surrounding a sinister motivational speaker!
* Eisner Award-winning creator of Battlepug! * Superhero mystery with explosive action!
* Written by Dennis Hopeless (Cable and X-Force, Avengers Arena)!
A superhero with an exclamation point on his face? I’ll bite! The comic starts out with Answer-man trying to convince a woman to jump from a ledge to the roof of an adjacent building as armed men fire at them and she isn't having any of it. Then we flash back to four hours earlier where the woman, a librarian named Devin, is at work doing a crossword puzzle, while mindlessly listening to and answering all the questions on Jeopardy. It's her thirtieth birthday and she opens a present from her mother which contains the hardest 3-D puzzle ball ever made. We abruptly switch to a new scene with a motivational speaker talking to a large audience about something called Aperion. We then jump to a scene of a convenience store robbery and Answer man saving the day when he gets an emergency call from someone whose face we never get to see. Answer man dispatches the bad guys and heads off to save Devin, who has solved the puzzle ball and logged onto the Aperion website. There is a kick ass action sequence as Answer man saves Devin but goes down in the fight.
This is the first issue and it has to cram enough info to make us understand the characters, dangle a bunch of hints and mysteries in front of us to get us excited about the story arc, and then hit us with an adrenaline pumping scene with lots of explosions and a surprise twist that has us thinking WTH?. Did this deliver? Yeah, it did. The last panel hooked me on this series and I am excited to see where it goes.
Price: $3.99
UPC: 7 61568 22480 1 00111
* Eisner Award-winning creator of Battlepug! * Superhero mystery with explosive action!
* Written by Dennis Hopeless (Cable and X-Force, Avengers Arena)!
A superhero with an exclamation point on his face? I’ll bite! The comic starts out with Answer-man trying to convince a woman to jump from a ledge to the roof of an adjacent building as armed men fire at them and she isn't having any of it. Then we flash back to four hours earlier where the woman, a librarian named Devin, is at work doing a crossword puzzle, while mindlessly listening to and answering all the questions on Jeopardy. It's her thirtieth birthday and she opens a present from her mother which contains the hardest 3-D puzzle ball ever made. We abruptly switch to a new scene with a motivational speaker talking to a large audience about something called Aperion. We then jump to a scene of a convenience store robbery and Answer man saving the day when he gets an emergency call from someone whose face we never get to see. Answer man dispatches the bad guys and heads off to save Devin, who has solved the puzzle ball and logged onto the Aperion website. There is a kick ass action sequence as Answer man saves Devin but goes down in the fight.
This is the first issue and it has to cram enough info to make us understand the characters, dangle a bunch of hints and mysteries in front of us to get us excited about the story arc, and then hit us with an adrenaline pumping scene with lots of explosions and a surprise twist that has us thinking WTH?. Did this deliver? Yeah, it did. The last panel hooked me on this series and I am excited to see where it goes.
I feel they went a little overboard convincing us just how smart Devin is in the beginning with an exposition dump, but they do only have 32 pages. I still can’t figure out what Aperion is but I don’t think we are supposed to know that yet. Why is he called Answer man? No idea yet, but he appears very detailed-oriented knowing exactly how many minutes and seconds before things happen.
The panel layout isn't generic looking and definitely says action comic to me with the bright colors and detailed characters. I don’t know how this story will play out just yet, but I plan on hanging around to find out.
3.5 “Dewey Decimal Master” Sheep
Sharon Stogner (edit by Kalpar)