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Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM |
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This Day in Alternate History Blog
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Midnighter: Killing Machine
The gay Batman goes solo…
By now, most people will be aware that I think that Wildstorm has made a few minor mistakes – LIKE CANCELING THE FREAKING BOYS, YOU STUPID MORONS – in their treatment of the much-hyped relaunch of many of their series. The series dedicated to The Midnighter – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnighter for details - was aimed at time travel fans…with Midnighter blackmailed into going back in time and killing the most dangerous man in the world; Adolph Hitler. Not, you would think, the most promising of stories; it’s been done before. Actually, it’s fairly good, if slightly overdone. Having been sent into 1916 to kill Hitler, Midnighter runs afoul of a group of time-travelling cops, accidentally winding up in 1945. After encountering – and saving – a group of child soldiers in Berlin, he confronts Hitler, only to allow history to take its course. With some help from the cops – including Sergeant Bunny Bunsen, lol – he is transported back to his own time, where he takes his revenge. So… Each issue is actually quite well done, from the more normal – for a comic book – encounters in issues 1, 3 and 5; Midnighter fights and does his stuff. He also has his head handed to him to the strains of Wagner by Sergeant Bunsen – that scene alone is worth a few giggles – and confronts armed mujs in Afghanistan. Issues 2 and 4, however, are much more interesting; bringing us to the horrors of the First World War, and then the final moments in Berlin. Hitler is very well drawn in his final moments; just a man, as Bonny points out later. Overall, a funny story, even though I would have preferred one on the Doctor. A moment was missed to give the Midnighter more character when it was revealed that his blackmailer, rather than being a Jew, was the son of someone whose only crime was being more of a fascist than Hitler, but in the end it doesn’t matter. Wildstorm, alas, has found another safe series…and lost the truly interesting ones.
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