I hate to say it in the beginning of a review, but I think it’s important to know what you’re getting with EnergyMan and that’s a Superman esque story. Of course I’m referring to the power set of the character because the origin is probably closer to that of Dr. Manhattan, but the point is it’s an “I can do everything” type of character. The issue starts interestingly enough as an entire city has been destroyed, but there’s no radiation. Nothing has moved due to the blast, but everything is vaporized. Except for one man; his name is Robert Galway and he wakes up in a hospital bed with the military standing guard over him. They try to get answers from him, but Robert can’t remember anything other than running. The rest of the story is spent with Robert discovering his powers at Area 51 and basically being under government protection.

There is an awkward moment in which Robert decides to play superhero and fight terrorists in the Middle East. It was out-of-place and awkward with the rest of the story. Obviously with his “nothing can stop me” superpowers the story is leading towards him being a hero, but at this point he barely knows how to turn his powers on so fighting terrorist suddenly and sneaking off of Area 51 undetected seems above his skill set. Though he did fly to the moon and back so… maybe not?

While the story isn’t bad, it’s not very original or entertaining. The dialogue is incredibly basic. The military never once uses any jargon and frankly it isn’t believable that they would even test his powers without first figuring out how to destroy him. Instead they give him a room and a TV and a suit that helps protect him from burning his clothes off. Now if it was going full-fledged superhero story where everything is possible then that’s fine, but it offers some explanations and grounds the story in some reality, but never full commits.

The art is actually interesting. It’s not groundbreaking, but it’s very competent and different for the genre. It’s in all black and white and while it’s inked, it still has a penciled vibe to it. It works with the story for sure. Really the only problem with the art is the awkward decisions made with the panels. The panels constantly broke the flow of the visual storytelling by having weird diagonals or people walking out of one panel into another panel to where it looked like they were standing on their own head. Other times panels would be situated in a way that would overlap other panels and yet leave room at the top of the panel that could have been covered up because it wasn’t important to the story or art. It hurt the storytelling is what I’m getting at.

The main problem with EnergyMan is that it didn’t bring anything new to the superhero genre. Sure there might be a twist to what gives Robert his powers and what his weakness is, but ultimately that doesn’t make him that different from the other overpowered superhero characters that are out there. There could be a twist in future issues that may change my mind, but for a first issue it was an average attempt at the superhero genre and with so much out there… that’s not good enough.

Score: 3/5

Writer/Creator: Mark Stanislawski Artist: Francesco Conte Publisher: RocketBlast Comics Website