In Review: Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt (2019-) #1

Synopsis: His level of genius is matched only by his heroics, and in humanity’s darkest hour, he’s the hero they need the most—alas, poor humanity. Peter Cannon—the man known as Thunderbolt—is only too happy to leave civilization to face its end.

Review: Kieron Gillen brings us a superhero that cares little for the world he is setting out to save, which is an almost too perfect contradiction.

The Story

One of the worlds major cities have been leveled by an Alien Invasion and the worlds heroes have met up to try and come up with a way to defeat the alien threat. One hero. Millionaire, genius Peter Cannon aka Thunderbolt is somewhat reluctant to step in and save the day, but when he eventually gets around to it he comes up with an interesting take on what is behind the alien threat. In that, he concludes that the invasion was staged in order to get the worlds various countries to align against a common threat as opposed to each other. The question, ‘Who would come up with such a diabolical scheme?’

The Artwork

Caspar Wijngaard does the art and delivers some interesting character drawings and a pretty gruesome landscape of a leveled city. Unfortunately, although the art was okay. I didn’t really connect with it because I was kind of expecting more the art. It seemed kind of Saturday morning cartoon where I feel the story required darker tones and colors for the cityscape moments in the book.

Overall

I’m not totally hooked yet. The revelation at the close of the book is probably enough to keep me hooked for issue 2, but for the long haul, I’m going to need a lot more from this book.

I enjoyed the meeting of the various characters at the beginning, but do not feel I know enough about these characters as yet to be able to care for them as I do for other comic book heroes. Hopefully, this will be addressed in the second issue because I think there is some potential there. In a small way, the other characters put me in mind of the various characters that have worked with Doc Savage over the years, but they need a bit more fleshing out in order to make me care.