The Nevermen

Written by Phil Amara
Art by Guy Davis

This one really didn't do much for me.  I picked it up at a con because I have always enjoyed Davis's artwork, he was in attendance at the show and I wanted something to get signed, and the price was right.

This is a deeply weird project.  It was a four issue series, preceded by a three-part story in Dark Horse Presents, but I can't help feeling like I've missed some essential origin story, as this starts off as if the reader has been following these characters for years, and knows all about who they are, their relationships to each other, and how their world works.  You can tell Amara assumes this, because NO WHERE in this book is there any sort of explication.  The story starts, and you just sort of float along in it, completely guessing as to what's going on.

To recap this puppy is just about impossible.  What I can tell you is that there are five guys who all dress the same who seem to be superheroes.  There are some wondrously bizarre villains, and another guy called the Murderist who is either a hero or a villain, but I can't really tell.  Some guy called Clockwork has some kind of doomsday device.  Or something like that.  There is little in the way of narrative, and next to nothing in terms of character development.

What saves this book is the visual aesthetic that Davis employs.  The setting is some sort of retro-future gangland Chicago.  It's not steampunk, because it is meant to evoke a later period, but it does look damn cool.  The bad guys put the weirdest Dick Tracy villains to shame, my favourite being Honshu, a squid-faced Triad boss.  Around the half way point, I think I stopped trying to understand things, and instead just focused on Davis's wonderful art.

This is worth avoiding. Trust me.