After reviewing issue #1 of this title some time ago, I wondered if I was being too harsh with it. Will this issue turn things around for Farah in her comic book incarnation? Your Major Spoilers review of Heroes: Godsend #2 awaits!
HEROES: GODSEND #2
Writer: Joey Falco
Artist: Roy Allan Martinez
Colorist: Ester Salguero
Letterer: Jim Campbell
Editor: Martin Eden
Publisher: Titan Comics
Cover Price: $3.99
Previously in Heroes: Godsend: “Farah’s work at Primatech brings her into a clash with HRG and the Haitian. Plus she has to undergo a secret mission into a prison to break-out an old face from the Heroes TV show! Plus, just what is Angela Petrelli up?”
SUPER OVERWROUGHT AND OVERWRITTEN
One of the greatest weaknesses of adapting ‘Heroes’ into comic books is the fact that much of the drama of the original series came from seeing comic book tropes done in live-action. This issue picks up where last issue left off, with Farah Nazan living a double life. By day, she’s a bright young student with a part-time intern gig at Primatech; by night, she’s the unseen avenger of crime and badness known as Godsend. She has a boy she’s sort of interested in, and is trying to seem like a perfectly normal girl. All that goes out the window when she sees a man being attacked in the parking lot of her office and uses her powers to intervene. The attacker easily neutralizes her abilities, and we find that the whole thing is a ruse by Heroes regulars HRG and The Haitian, a “job interview” to see if she’s up to the task of helping them with a particular mission: Break Mr. Linderman out of Riker’s Island Prison.
ART FEELS ODDLY INCOMPLETE
The issue also features a sequence with two Angela Petrelli’s (due to, I presume, time-travel shenanigans?), but until the characters explicitly call out the fact that they’re the same woman, I had no idea. The art in this issue suffers from a general indistinctness, with faces changing from panel to panel on the same page, and the likenesses of the characters never particularly strong. Sadly, the coloring/production exacerbates the issue, emphasizing the weaknesses of the rendering with various computer effects that only magnify the wobbly art. The dialogue is likewise a problem, with every caption full of first-person overblown narrative, and the discussions between Farah and the other characters not only stating what we can clearly see in the art, but repetitiously overstating and restating these facts. Having not seen ‘Heroes: Reborn,’ perhaps some of the plotting issues can be attributed to the story serving as supporting material for the televised episodes, but all the characters have the same wordy, grandiose voice, making it harder to enjoy the issue.
THE BOTTOM LINE: NOT SATISFYING
It’s always tough when a comic is just generally not-quite-right, and I worried after reading issue #1 that I was being too harsh on an opening chapter, but this issue contains the same weaknesses: Plotting coincidences that make it seem like most of the story is being told elsewhere, a main character that seems remote and without agency, and art that confuses where it should be the strongest. Heroes: Godsend #2 seems to require more knowledge of the series than I have and doesn’t quite have everything together in terms of either art of story, leading to a disappointing 1.5 out of 5 stars overall. Licensed comics are always a difficult beast, but even without the ties to ‘Heroes’, this issue has problems with consistency and coherence that affect its readability…
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