Maximum Force #1 is a one-shot reprinting two previous Maximum Force stories as a trailer for an upcoming miniseries. This is a superhero book, but it's a superhero book by Dave Elliott and Simon Bisley, with everything that implies.

I've always been ambivolent about Simon Bisley's artwork. Bisley is one of the most insanely over the top artists you'll find, and of course that's largely the point of his work. His style doesn't really work for me outside absurd comedy stories, though. On stories that are trying to take themselves seriously, it usually strikes me as out of place.

In this issue, Elliot and Bisley are trying to have their cake and eat it. Much of it is gleefully absurd. It has a deliberately simplistic plot, it has the obligatory Bisley ultraviolence, and it has Blitz, The Manic Mandrill, a talking mandrill who hits criminals over the head with a wrench. Oh, and a demented cyborg Thor calling himself Max Carnage. It's a superhero book exaggerated to the point of lunacy, in other words.

On the other hand, the first story introduces a relatively sane subplot about the team being helped by one of Thor's old friends. And the second story seems to be taking itself more or less seriously, despite featuring extensive female nudity way beyond the point of making any rational sense.

The result is a book that doesn't work for me, and seems to fall between the two stools of being a real story, and a ridiculous exaggeration. Elliott and Bisley's fanbase will probably be happy enough with it, since it's nothing particularly unexpected from either of them, but I'll pass.

Rating: C

back | continue