Comics Review: “Insufferable” #4 (IDW)

- by Ninja Ross, 7 August 2015

Being late is a good thing! You're supposed to turn up to parties late, right?!? And then everyone has a good time, because that's how it works. I assume this is also how it works with comic books, with which I have a lot more experience. With this in mind, I happily picked up "Insufferable" issue 4 knowing absolutely nothing about. Nothing. I didn't even know it was by Mark Waid and Peter Krause until seeing the cover. So, let's put the “fashionably late” theory to the test!

The cover. Click to enlarge.

“Insufferable”, published by IDW, opens with a woman named “The Choice” holding two men hostage with another older man sobbing next to her. He has to figure out which of the younger men is his son, therefore saving his life. This all happens on a Monday. I don't know how important that is, but “Monday” is written in big block capitals in the first panel.

Since The Choice is featured on the cover, I automatically thought she would be the protagonist and this depressed me a little bit! This doesn't seem like a terribly nice thing to do, even if the guy's an asshole.

But no, it seems she's doing it to irritate some guy named Nocturnis. Thankfully, Nocturnis (I'm guessing it's Nocturnis) is disguised as one of the henchmen, so he's able to save the day.

A little while later, when the guy and his son are on the sofa comforting each other, some superhero shows up. He's LATE. This guy knows how things are done, am I right?!?

We find out later that this is Galahad, the actual protagonist. Nocturnis? That's his dad! It's like watching a soap opera. Will The Choice turn out to be his half-sister who has a twin sister who is the complete opposite of her? The Pro-life? I dunno. Bit of a stretch. Maybe.

It's around here we learn that Galahad actually outed himself as a superhero to the media a while ago. Galahad is also known as Jarod Culver, who happens to be some rich guy. I don't know anything about how he got that rich.

But this is a pretty cool scene. Slasher, an old nemesis, has abducted Culver's ex-girlfriend. Culver is in full Galahad get up riding a motorcycle, trying to stop Slasher's big armoured car.

Throughout the whole thing, Culver is linked to Twitter, monitoring every tweet made with him mentioned. It all seems pretty positive at first, until someone with the account name “FAILahad” start tweeting some negativity.

Galahad and his Twitter feed. Also, Stephen Wacker being a troll.

As the chase progresses, the tweets and retweets mocking him and hoping for his failure outweigh the positive tweets. Eventually, each panel is littered with a different person retweeting FAILahad. It's a pretty cool scene, using social media to help bring the character down to a low point.

Despite having not read a single issue before, the book isn't too difficult to keep up with. Some things are confusing! I'm missing bits! But Waid does a good job of keeping things fresh in the reader's mind while keeping it fun. Or maybe it's really repetitive and the same stuff happens in the first three issues, I don't know.

When you read a book by Mark Waid, you know it'll at least be pretty good. Waid is a writer who has proven himself several times in the comic book industry. For Insufferable, he provides a well-paced script with plenty of action and each day helpfully labelled, which is appreciated.

Stan Lee did the whole "every issue is somebody's first" thing, and we're running with that, son.

Peter Krause's art work is nice and dark, giving the book a kind of noir feel at times. The characters have some cool designs, if a little too subtle for a book about superheroes. Unless that's the point. I don't know, I haven't been reading it! Either way, they still look great.

Nolan Woodward's colours both compliment and contrast Krause's grittier style, giving it a colourful edge during the brighter scenes, but keeping things gloomy where gloom is needed. Krause and Woodward work pretty well together.

I am pretty late to this party. But it appears I am not too late to enjoy it! Like everyone's only kind of drunk and nobody has thrown up, yet. I can catch up easily. And catching up with the first three issues sounds like a blast. If you haven't read any of Insufferable, you should read them at a party! And turn up late! I've proven that that's the way it should be done.


Are you late to "Insufferable", or have you been following it for ages on Thrillbent? How do you like it? Let us know in the comments!

Tagged: comics, Reviews.

blog comments powered by Disqus

Loading

---

Follow @TrashMutant