Comic review: Book of Death #1- Hey Stoopid

Writer: Robert Venditti
Art: Robert Gill
Publisher: Valiant Comics
Released: 15th July 2015

Book of Death #1 is a cliché ridden threat event book with a bunch of superheroes fighting to save the world from an evil dictator, or something, and it has a book in it about a prophecy, and the only one who can read it is a young girl.

The story is about the girl, and who gets to control her, a heroic superhero bloke, or the heroic intelligence agencies. Yes, I said that correctly, the heroic intelligence agencies.

Soldiers and cops, the dogs of the state

The villains in the book are threats to the established order, and it’s up to the military and those working for them, to stop the threats, and to keep things going as they are, because obviously, everything is going just fine at the moment.

I found it telling that the book, when looking for historical examples of horrible things happening, went to the Spanish Inquisition and the Second World War. There is no mention of Iraq, or Gitmo, or rendition, or Abu Ghraib or Edward Snowden, or Bradley Manning, or Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, the Ukraine, ISIS and how the west is openly funding terrorism now.

No, forget all of the things happening NOW, that’s controversial, lets go back to the safe examples, and back to telling our silly little childish comic book threat event book.

I cannot conceive how any half-intelligent adult would get any enjoyment out of this embarrassingly stupid child’s comic book.

I know that contemporary comic book narratives have a habit of reinforcing the status quo and ignoring all of the important issues of our post 9/11 world, but this one really is taking things to a whole new level of deliberate, pointless, dumbed down idiocy. Every single thing about it is perfunctory to the core, and I see no point whatsoever in wasting any more words on it.


Rating: 2/10 (Childish drivel)