About Heroes

Author: Grant Morrison
Artist: J.H. Williams III

Looks like Aboutheroes wasn't the only thing delayed. Hell, I think we were just under three weeks late. This book was scheduled to come out months ago (June 21st to be exact) and to be honest I didn't think it would make it out. And now its here, but before I talk about the review; I wanted to talk just a little about everything leading up to this issue.

There were a total of 29 issues leading up to this book. Seven miniseries, which were all four issues in length, and a one-shot book: Seven Soldiers # 0. Now, issue zero came out in February of 2005 and Frankenstein #4 (which I believe to be the last book) came out in April of this year. Do you have to read all 29 issues of the minis leading up to this? Of course not, but if you want to be less confused, you might want to try to find the trades.

Morrison himself said that each of the four issues is self-contained reads because he wanted to try a modular story. Somebody should have told the guys making the trade paperbacks, because books are scattered between trades. But this is not really their fault; it's more of Morrison's because he is the one that failed at living up to his modular story telling idea. Sometimes one issue would lead into another and each of the miniseries ended in a cliffhanger. Regardless, they were damn good and I really couldn't wait for this issue.

I didn't have time to go back and reread all the issues leading up to this, but there was just so much going on here, that it wouldn't have hurt. There is death and betrayal in this issue under its rich detailed subtext. Although, I found it not be as heavy as the other series though. When you build up a story for 29 issues and over a year, people expect something big. I don't think there was plenty of space for Morrison to go and do everything he wanted. This might have worked great as an 80 page finale instead of the 32 pages.

Despite of lack of pages it doesn't really impact the story. As I said earlier although it's not as dialogue heavy as the previous issues, it still takes a while to get through it and it will require more than one sitting to fully comprehend everything (specially for those of us that can't remember shit). I'm going to try to do this review without spoilers so I'm not going to say who gets killed and who the traitor is. Keeps you in suspense like it did me and made the book more fun to read.

Although the story is a bit confusing and I could see where it would give some people a headache. The artwork is nothing like that; it's clean and crisp and does a damn fine job bringing this detailed script to life. I particularly enjoyed Williams beginning of the universe piece using a Jack Kirby style. This ending ties up 90% of the loose ends and they are thrown in so fast you might miss it. I think this will read 100% in trade but for right now I'm giving it a
B+ .