Solar: Man of the Atom Volume 3 - Eclipse

Solar: Man of the Atom (Dynamite) #3

by Frank J. Barbiere, Jonathan Lau, Marc Laming (Illustrations)

Life's tough for the daughter of a super-scientist and costumed hero! When her father -- Solar, the Man of the Atom -- passed from this mortal coil, Erica Seleski assumed his powers and traversed the stars! But it's been a rough transit

Genres: Comics

112 pages, Paperback

First published November 3, 2015

About the author

Frank J. Barbiere is a #1 Amazon.com best-selling writer from New Jersey.

Frank is a former English teacher with degrees from Rutgers University and the Graduate School for Education.

After breaking into the comics industry with the creator-owned hit Five Ghosts (Image Comics), Frank has since worked for every major publisher in the U.S., as well as having a global presence in France (Glenat Comics), Italy (Cosmo Editoriale), and Spain (Norma) with his creator-owned work. He has written notable runs on Avengers World and Howling Commandos of S.H.I.E.L.D. at Marvel Comics, as well as the creator-owned series Black Market and Broken World (BOOM! Studios), The Revisionist (Aftershock Comics), Violent Love (Image Comics), and The White Suits (Dark Horse Comics).

In 2017, Frank began working as a writer and narrative designer in the video games industry. He has since contributed to the Destiny franchise and was lead writer on Darksiders Genesis and Ruined King: A League of Legends Story. He currently works as a Lead Writer at Skydance Interactive.

Reviews

[47Time]

This arc degenerated into 90's-style storytelling. An evil guy threatens the world and aims to aquire Erica's power. Erica's jokes are still up to par, but all the energy being thrown around by Cyclops look-a-likes is just boring here.

Erica tries to return to her old life, but a nuclear reactor that is about to blow brings her back into the superhero business. She is overpowered by the androids that destabilized the reactor and has to rely on Doctor Spektor's help. Together they will face an enemy that would easily destroy any one of them on a 1-on-1 battle. Sadly, it's just not that fun.

Erica finds that her brother Colin also received a dose of his father's energy and is able to see Phil. Spektor's abilities are similar to hers, but of a magical origin. Their energies must be combined into one to face Eclipse - who looks surprisingly like the X-Man Cyclops, but talks like a 70's villain. He wants their power for himself and begins by killing Phil. The latter's power is assimilated into Erica who is now able to generate a black hole to send Eclipse away.

[Alan]

Barbiere does one thing really well in the finale, and another not so well.

What he does well is really get me vested in the relationship between Erica, her father Phil, and even her brother Colin. The reason, and maybe because I'm a parent this is a factor, I would recommend this series to someone is to watch the growth of Erica's and Phil's relationship.

Even in the end they both realize that their relationship is not perfect, but that they have one.

All of the super heroics, Xplode (thank you ye olde WE forum for that word), is secondary for me, especially as the Big Bad, is well not so bad in my book. Though in truth the hardest thing to create is a good villain.

An improvement over the previous series from Dark Horse Comics.

[Chad]

Really generic telegraphed story. Eclipse is supposed to be the antithesis of Solar, but he's really just a mustache twirling stereotypical baddie with zero motivation. You can tell there were originally plans for a longer story that the writer had to condense down before the series ended. All of the little side plots from the previous volumes are ignored and dropped. All in all a sad end to a somewhat promising series.

[Chris]

Will be sad if this is the end of doctor solar series. Kinda a lame ending in general to the arch.