FORMAT: TRADE PAPERBACK | RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 8TH
A new breed of superhero battles his greatest enemy yet – anxiety! When DJ Liam James receives a black hole in the mail from his estranged mother, it jumps out of the box and takes up residence in his chest (think Preacher, crossed with Green Lantern). This grants Liam wacky, cosmic superpowers – all the better to spin records and fight crime. Or, in this case, aliens and a Trump-esque wannabe dictator.
Collapser, from DC’s Young Animal imprint, is the closest thing to proper Vertigo comics fans have had in years. At the same time, it feels fresh and relevant to modern readers (especially the high-anxiety millennial audience). This self-conscious hip-ness might alienate some, but what do you expect from a line of books curated by My Chemical Romance guy Gerard Way?
The writing itself is something of a mixed bag. While the dialogue and characterisation itself is essentially fine, the book is overly reliant upon internal dialogue; big, black bubbles which take up the bulk of artist Ilias Kyriazis’s gorgeous panels. Distracting, repetitive and annoying, it’s like reading an angsty millennial Frank Miller, and makes Liam a difficult hero to get on board with. All the same, its cosmic sci-fi game is strong, and Kyriazis’s artwork is simply tremendous. Somebody put this guy on a Green Lantern book, fast!
Collapser is one of the freshest, most vibrantly alive books we’ve had in years. Like its angsty, manic protagonist, it’s a little much sometimes… but what’s more old-school Vertigo than that?
