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PunchLine #1-5
Punchline: Blood Sisters
After decades of wearing a cape and protecting the city of Seaholm, Mel is forced to retire and train her replacement. The new cape in town is Jessie, a teenager who is different from Mel in almost every way. Together, they chase the other super-types from Mel's past, leading to a brutal confrontation with the monster called Sawtooth. Collects: Punchline #1-5
- GenresComics
128 pages, Paperback
First published April 9, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 31, 2020
Mentor and Rookie Superhero Tale
Review of the author's crowdfunded pdf edition (2020)
Rounded down from [3.5]
I read Punchline: Blood Sisters as a perk from the recent Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for Punchline: Super Frenemies.
The story has a good premise with one superhero hanging up her cape (so to speak) and being able to transfer her abilities to a teenager who expresses interest in taking up the job. The superhero capability transfer happens via a blood transfer hence the subtitle of the book. This is a world where several superheroes exist openly but still with secret identities. There is tension in the mentor and rookie learning relationship due to some uncertainty in the motives of the mentor.
The downsides were perhaps slight but were enough to bother me a bit. The art work at various points blacks out portions of the face of the mentor in ways that give them a skull-like appearance i.e. two big black shapes for eyes, a droopy tear shaped black drop for a nose. This just looked odd and creepy. Perhaps it is intended to foreshadow some dark intentions in the future, but for a hero figure it was simply odd.
The other downside was that the big-bad in this comic book cycle (Blood Sisters is an anthology collection of Issues #1-5 in the series) was a character named "Sawtooth" which was exactly like the character named "King Shark" in the Flash TV series where they appeared periodically from Season 2 (2015-16) onwards i.e. a shark headed bodied creature on humanoid legs. That just seemed like a cheap steal for a 2019 book.
I still enjoyed the book and art overall and look forward to the next installment.
Review of the author's crowdfunded pdf edition (2020)
Rounded down from [3.5]
I read Punchline: Blood Sisters as a perk from the recent Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for Punchline: Super Frenemies.
The story has a good premise with one superhero hanging up her cape (so to speak) and being able to transfer her abilities to a teenager who expresses interest in taking up the job. The superhero capability transfer happens via a blood transfer hence the subtitle of the book. This is a world where several superheroes exist openly but still with secret identities. There is tension in the mentor and rookie learning relationship due to some uncertainty in the motives of the mentor.
The downsides were perhaps slight but were enough to bother me a bit. The art work at various points blacks out portions of the face of the mentor in ways that give them a skull-like appearance i.e. two big black shapes for eyes, a droopy tear shaped black drop for a nose. This just looked odd and creepy. Perhaps it is intended to foreshadow some dark intentions in the future, but for a hero figure it was simply odd.
The other downside was that the big-bad in this comic book cycle (Blood Sisters is an anthology collection of Issues #1-5 in the series) was a character named "Sawtooth" which was exactly like the character named "King Shark" in the Flash TV series where they appeared periodically from Season 2 (2015-16) onwards i.e. a shark headed bodied creature on humanoid legs. That just seemed like a cheap steal for a 2019 book.
I still enjoyed the book and art overall and look forward to the next installment.
May 27, 2019
I first got into this series by reading the Free Comic Book Day edition of the first issue that makes up this trade paperback collection.
That first issue was a pretty interesting read as it introduces the reader to one superhero being made to retire and pass her powers on to a new hero and then train that replacement.
All in all, a pretty interesting concept to explore and certainly not a topic you'd get to write a story about in a title from Marvel or DC.
But unfortunately for me, once I picked up the trade collection of the first five issues, I found each successive chapter a little less interesting. As I read each new story, I just found it to be kind of treading water as it morphed from that original idea of training a new hero to more of a revenge/score settling from the mentor on her past foes. And while it might've been a neat way to meld the old and new together, I just found it to be a whole lot of angst and drama that became a bit too much in the way of overkill for my tastes.
I'm kind of hoping that I somehow missed something on the initial read and that a future read down the line will reveal more of the story and intent to me but for now, I just found this an OK type of read. Which is definitely disappointing because I started off with such high hopes for this story.
That first issue was a pretty interesting read as it introduces the reader to one superhero being made to retire and pass her powers on to a new hero and then train that replacement.
All in all, a pretty interesting concept to explore and certainly not a topic you'd get to write a story about in a title from Marvel or DC.
But unfortunately for me, once I picked up the trade collection of the first five issues, I found each successive chapter a little less interesting. As I read each new story, I just found it to be kind of treading water as it morphed from that original idea of training a new hero to more of a revenge/score settling from the mentor on her past foes. And while it might've been a neat way to meld the old and new together, I just found it to be a whole lot of angst and drama that became a bit too much in the way of overkill for my tastes.
I'm kind of hoping that I somehow missed something on the initial read and that a future read down the line will reveal more of the story and intent to me but for now, I just found this an OK type of read. Which is definitely disappointing because I started off with such high hopes for this story.
April 16, 2019
Beautiful art and I get everything the writer is throwing down.
Seriously, thanks for reading our book.
Seriously, thanks for reading our book.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews