There's a particular kind of lazy and greedy that I find spectacularly disgusting, and it's the kind of lazy and greedy that produced Revenge: The secret origins of Emily Thorne.
When my sister was critical of the art in this Revenge comic last month I wanted to read the book and defend it: "oh no," I wanted to say, "the art is fine, you're just not all that comic-literate, read these books and then we'll talk about cool comic book art!" Well, shame on me for my plotting, scheming, and presuppositions - the art in this comic book is shit.
The story is shit too - as someone who has never seen Revenge on TV this comic makes me think that the show is probably pretty terrible. If the story is this bad all the time I'm not missing anything and maybe some writers should get fired. But then again maybe this book was just a cheap money grab that was made to try to tempt the Revenge viewing audience into becoming comic consumers and making the producers even MORE money, and was put together as quickly, cheaply, and shittily as possible. (Hint: I'm guessing the second scenario there is more likely than a popular TV show being this bad).
I actually don't know what part to attack first - the characters had no personality on either the written or visual side, there's no interesting background given to either the panels or the plot, and everything feels amateurish and predictable.
The art was bad enough that it was hard to tell what was going on because it was largely sketchily-done figures with no distinguishing features against a blank gradient of a background. I think there was one panel in the entire book where the main character (Emily? Or Amanda? Which was the name she took from the friend she killed in prison? Did she kill the friend or just steal the name? I don't know and can't bring myself to care) actually looked like Emily VanCamp - which is startling because VanCamp has a very distinctive face that should be easy to render with practice, so long as you aren't trying to put together a comic book out of the torn-out sketchbook pages of your penciller.
The lettering was acceptable.
And seriously I don't know who to blame for the writing here. It's awful. I don't know anything about the show but now I know that Amandily is a petulant, whining brat who also happens to be an idiot. Knowing that this is the background of the character makes her less interesting and makes the story less plausible.
The comic was reprehensible, and a waste of time. I wish I hadn't read it because it honestly wasn't even decent enough or consistent enough to serve as a good "what not to do" guide. It was pure time wasting with no joy. Fuck this book.
Cheers,
Alli
Fuck, I can't even properly cite this piece of shit because too many people are responsible for this festering mess, so here's the information on the title page:
Story: Ted Sullivan
Script: Erica Schultz
Artist/Colorist, Page 1-43 and 85-88: Vincenzo Balzano
Artist, Page 44-84: Felix Ruiz
Inker, Page 79-84: Scott Hanna
Colorist, Page 44-84: Esther Sanz
Letterer: VC's Cory Petit
Editor: Emily Shaw
Cover Art: Dustin Nguyen
Collection Editor: Jennifer Grunwald
Assistant Editor: Sarah Brunstad
Associate Managing Editor: Alex Starbuck
Editor, Special Projects: Mark D. Beazley
Senior Editor, Special Projects: Jeff Youngquist
SVP Print, Sales, & Marketing: David Gabriel
Book Design: Jeff Powell
Editor in Chief: Axel Alonso
Chief Creative Officer: Joe Quesada
Publisher: Dan Buckley
Executive Producer: Alan Fine
^^^^^^^^ That is A LOT of people who could have ameliorated the terribleness of this book.
Revenge: The secret origin of Emily Thorne. Marvel Worldwide Inc. New York: New York. 2014.
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