I've always had a soft spot in my heart for
Red Tornado.
I was the only one of my friends who owned his Super Powers figure when I was a kid.
When everyone was getting copies of MARVELS signed by
Kurt Busiek at a con years ago, I was the only guy who waited with the 4-issue RED TORNADO mini-series. (Yeah, even Mr. Busiek was surprised.)
Finally, while everyone was reading Peter David's
YOUNG JUSTICE series for DC for the teenagers, I was reading it because Red Tornado was there.
So, yeah, my standards were set pretty high for this series, and after reading #1, I was pleased to see Reddy treated right. Let's face it, if you've read
ANYTHING about Red Tornado in the past, he's gotten the short end of the stick on more than one occasion. (I seem to remember the words "
HANSON SUCKS" painted across his chest at one point in his extremely-varied career.
Writer Kevin VanHook gives readers a VERY strong story with little actual Red Tornado dialogue. (I think throughout the course of the book, Red Tornado speaks around 5 lines of dialogue...?) The rest of the book is setting up a story that WILL not only reveal some stuff about Reddy's past that even HE might not have known, but long-time readers of the DCU will be surprised as well.
Downside? Certainly not the book itself. I'm not sure what to make of the new
RED TORNADO LOGO just yet, and I would have
totally bought a variant of this book.
If you enjoy story-driven comics where the artwork does NOT distract from the story, then
RED TORNADO #1 is the book for you.