The Immortal Men #1
Publisher: DC
Story: James Tynion IV
Pencils: Jim Lee, Ryan Benjamin
Inks: Scott Williams, Richard Friend
Colors: Alex Sinclair, Jeremiah Skipper
Letters: Carlos M. Mangual
The latest title in DC’s “New Age of Heroes” comics, The Immortal Men includes a mix of new and existing characters, and was one of the earliest titles announced due to its powerhouse creative team of Tynion IV and Lee. Unfortunately, but honestly not all that unexpectedly, there were delays publishing the issue, and a second artist had to be brought on board to help Lee finish this issue. In addition, Lee is leaving the series after this issue, so despite DC’s focus on “artist first” for the New Age of Heroes, little has been done to make that a reality.
The premise of the Immortal Men is intriguing – two warring groups of immortal characters (hunters and hunted), and a new point-of-view character, a young man named Caden Park, who is experiencing very vivid, strange dreams of a meeting place for the immortals that Caden calls The Campus. As a quick elevator pitch, it sounds good, and there’s lots of room to add depth and detail to the story given the cast of immortal characters.
But, just like Lee’s art was unfinished, this first issue feels a little incomplete. There are kernels of really great ideas, but they need to be fleshed out more to make the story more compelling. Ideally, we’ll see that in the next couple of issues and the series will pick up steam. As it is now, it’s difficult to get a handle on the large cast of characters, who are barely given a surface introduction, if they are properly introduced at all. There are some very strong character archetypes, so they feel familiar, but very little is revealed about them.
Caden Park, who appears so far to be the main character of this series, shows promise. He’s a young Asian college student with conservative, worried parents. He fills the role of the “unexpected hero” model, and that is played up heavily in this first issue. As an interesting choice, Caden is in therapy due to the recurring dreams he keeps having, and that little detail makes him much more real and relatable than he otherwise would have come across.
Lee’s art stays very close to his usual style, but his character work is so strong that it’s easy to forgive the semi-90’s vibe the book gives off. The designs for the Park family in particular (Caden and his mom and dad), including small details of clothing, hair styles, and facial expressions, are great and help make them characters that the reader will care about. The designs for the different immortal characters are somewhat less successful, or at least less consistent. Some of the characters have an interesting look, but others seem very derivative of dozens of other characters we’ve seen before.
There’s a strong horror element to the book, which is a good touch and helps ground the story into something far more interesting than just immortals trying to kill each other. Incorporating the dream realm and the Campus from Caden’s dreams also sets the story apart from other similar ideas that explore immortal characters moving throughout history. Then to add to all of this, in order to provide the thinnest tie-in thread to the Dark Nights Metal event (from which the New Age of Heroes books are supposed to spring forth), there is a completely unnecessary and confusing scene involving the Batman Who Laughs, which comes across as though it were added later, out of context, after an editor said, “Don’t forget the obligatory mention of Dark Nights Metal.” It does nothing to advance the plot whatsoever.
The Immortal Men #1 has a lot going on, and there is great potential for a huge, sweeping epic story about DC’s immortal characters and their place in the Rebirth universe. So far, however, a huge amount of plot points and characters have been offered forth, but there is little to tie everything together. Future issues will quickly need to grab onto all of the different ideas presented in this first issue and begin bringing them all into a more coherent story.
Martin Thomas
martin@comicattack.net
It seems like all of these have less of a connection to Metal than advertised.
Yes, I agree with that so far. I think part of it had to do with the sporadic publishing schedule for Metal (I have that t-shirt that lists the release dates on the back, like a concert t-shirt, and the dates at the end are months off from the original plan), so they had to change the Metal tie-ins for the “New Age of Heroes” to account for the potential that the New Age stuff might come out before Metal was over. That’s my guess, at least.