Dread Gods #1 Review
Written by Ron Marz
Art by Tom Raney
Colours by Nanjan Jamberi
Reviewed by Lorna Maltman (maltmanlorna@gmail.com)
Dread Gods plays with the Greek mythology and reinvents it into a sci-fi mystery that is yet to be fully revealed. The comic starts off with a small orange wheelchair bound man called Carver who is trying to get ahead of a crowd so that he can get himself plugged into a big computer/light source called Prometheus. This Prometheus instead of giving man fire gives them entertainment in the form a living through Zeus, I think fire was slightly more revolutionary but it is a close call.
From here the comic transitions to Zeus who awakes to his wife Hera and an adoring crowd. A Hydra attack interrupts this adoration. It is at this point things get weird, Zeus ‘transforms’ into having four arms and calls for his godlings who is the other gods such as Ares and Apollo to vanquish the hydra. Hades who sent this monster appears and does a villain’s monologue that ticks all the cliché boxes and then disappears. The issue ends though with Carver thinking that Zeus has asked him to help the Gods.
The characters in Dread God’s, at least for the moment, have very little layers to them and are not inherently intriguing. Marz does a good job of creating a fun issue, but I left this issue feeling indifferent whether I would even want to come back for the second issue; and for someone who loved ancient history so much that when I was eight for I made top trumps out of the important figures in Greek and Roman history, that is a great disappointment.
Raney and Jamberi’s art and colours bring a vibrancy to the comic and whilst at points the art can feel quite simplistic, overall it does a good job of conveying a great big adventure filled with action.
Verdict:
Pass. The society that Carver is from, is the only thing that actually is intriguing enough to come back, the rest of the comic falls flat with the characters having little to no dimensions to them. The art is good but never stunning.
