Comics
[Comic Review] “Bill & Ted’s Most Triumphant Return” #2 Has No Stakes
“Bill & Ted’s Most Triumphant Return” #2 fares a bit better than its debut, generating a lot more laughs and character moments that both feel genuinely Bill & Ted. There’s even a couple heartfelt moments that truly resonate, cutting through the bland no-stakes plot and a few confounding choices.
WRITTEN BY: Bryan Lynch & Ryan North
ART BY: Jerry Gaylord & Ian McGinty
PUBLISHER: BOOM! Studios
PRICE: $2.99
RELEASE: April 8, 2015
Bill & Ted are never in any real tangible danger here, there’s no sense of urgency, nothing is at stake. They devote a majority of the issue merely following Chuck De Nomolos around, if anyone pushes the plot forward it’s him, not our heroes. He’s also a bit of a conundrum, the book spends it’s opening pages turning him into a sympathetic character, one who I’m sure many readers and even Bill & Ted themselves could relate to. He’s blamed and mocked for the person he grows up to be, it’s unfair and presented as something he can’t escape. He’s an outsider, no one wants to even sit next to him, let alone interact with him. He has no friends and no love in his life, aside from his family.
In these pages he’s built up to be someone put down by the entire world and damned for events that haven’t even come to pass. Now you’re thinking, where did it all go so wrong for this kid? Who or what sent him down this path of universal ridicule? Well as it turns out he’s just plain bad, he was/is/will always be evil. It makes for a dull and tedious villain, who’s got no redeeming features.
On the flip side of this Bill & Ted make it their mission to help him find friendship. Their honest enthusiasm towards trying to improve De Nomolos’s life is makes the story worthwhile. They see someone who they should, by all accounts but instead they see someone whose struggling with loneliness. The principles of being rad to each other, no matter who they are is exemplary of what Bill & Ted are all about. A later page has the two reminiscing about their children, which is an excellent surprise that helps keep the books heart in the right place.
Bill & Ted’s Most Triumphant Return is still a bit clunky but it’s now pointed in a much more promising direction.
IDW Dark and Paramount recently joined forces to launch limited comic book tales set in the worlds of Smile and A Quiet Place, and we’ve learned today that they’ll continue hanging around in those franchise universes with two brand new limited series tales.
Entertainment Weekly has exclusively revealed this afternoon that IDW Dark’s Any Given Smile debuts in September, while A Quiet Place: Rising Tides arrives in November.
First up, from writer Stephanie Williams and artist Pablo Collar, Any Given Smile puts a football-themed twist on Parker Finn’s successful Smile movie franchise.
The five-part limited series is “set in January 1995, during the American Arena League football championship game in St. Augustine, Florida. The rising superstar of the Sharks, backup quarterback Dupree, is feeling the pressure from his teammates, the fans, and also the city’s gambling underworld, to whom he owes a considerable debt. Meanwhile, a sports journalist investigates a string of suicides that may be connected to the big game. At the very least, they are connected to a sinister entity that preys on the minds of its victims.”
From writer Declan Shalvey and artist Luke Sparrow, A Quiet Place: Rising Tides will also be a five-issue limited story. The comic book tale “brings the creatures to the Florida Keys, where a father-daughter duo attempt to survive on water in a houseboat.”
EW further details, “This tense family reunion coincides with the arrival of the vicious creatures that hunt through sound. Grace and her dad find safety on the open ocean, but she’ll have to make landfall sooner or later; the father’s oxygen tank and their supplies are running low, while a hurricane swiftly approaches.”
Learn more about both comic books over on Entertainment Weekly.
You must be logged in to post a comment.