This is a busy god damn book.  It was busy last month too, but I was hoping it would narrow focus a bit and get down to the nitty gritty.  I’m sure I’ve said this before but I’m not opposed to wide scope books with a cast of hundreds, even thousands.  Imperium is such a wide scope book but it is also a prime example of how to do it right.  Cramming in settings and characters doesn’t really make sense if they are just going to be disposable.  I would say to use your disposable story objects and dump them, but that doesn’t really make for a satisfying story either.  Which is evident from reading this books because I am not satisfied when I’m done. For as cramped and shallow as the story is the art is excellent.  I don’t really pay attention to the art, as I have said.  Art is just kind of a necessary evil when it comes to a visual medium.  It’s a lot like how I don’t really pay attention to cinematography in movies.  I know it exists and if you draw my attention to it I can appreciate it, but to me as long as it’s invisible it gets an A+.  If it detracts from the story it’s an F-.  Kind of a simple scale really.  I want to make it clear that I DO appreciate art and artists, but when I read a story I tend to scrutinize the writing and as long as the art doesn’t actively detract from my experience then I call that suc-cess bay-be!

The case of Green Hornet is one that I don’t come across often.  The story is just so unengaging that I’m forced to glom onto the art for some kind stimulus.  Luckily the art is probably the best part about this book.  The style is clean, vivid and very evocative.  The other nice thing about Green Hornet is that it probably has the most brilliant design of any of the other Legenderry books.  Vampirella and Red Sonja sort of interpret ‘Steampunk’ to mean ‘Victorian’ whereas Green Hornet embraces the Steampunk aesthetic to create some truly interesting retro-futuristic, clockwork designs.  I’m reminded of the motorized Penny-Farthing motorcycle from last issue as an example.  Here we have a cuckoo clock deathtrap and a group of clockwork villains introduced towards the end.  The story of Green Hornet has been somewhat disappointing, which has, unfortunately, been a theme of the Legenderry universe but the art adds something that the other books just don’t have.  It almost makes up for the story… almost.  It’s at least enough to buy it for a few more issues before I move on.

Score: 2/5

Legenderry - Green Hornet #2  Writer: Daryl Gregory Artist: Brent Peeples Colorist: Michael Bartolo Publisher: Dynamite Entertainment Price: $3.99 Release Date: 3/25/15 Format: Ongoing; Print/Digital