Heroes: Vengeance

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Heroes: Vengeance
Heroes Vengeance review
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Heroes Reborn rebooted the Heroes TV show, and among the differences was a character with super powers wearing a mask and costume for the first time. Before El Vengador appeared on the show, however, someone else wore the wrestler’s mask and protected their Los Angeles neighbourhood from thugs.

TV show creator Tim Kring’s introduction credits show writers Seamus Kevin Fahey and Zach Craley as being major comic fans, and that being the case you’re going to wonder why writers from an innovative show couldn’t have produced something that isn’t so by the numbers. Oscar Gutierrez watched his younger brother thrill to his Uncle’s professional wrestling bouts when a child, and now wears his mask and adopts his ring identity to fight gangsters. He’s brother to Carlos who became El Vengador on the TV show, and once that’s revealed don’t hold out much hope for Oscar making it to the final page. It transforms the suspense from wondering where the story will go to wondering how Oscar will die.

Fahey and Craley run El Vengador’s present day activities dealing with a people smuggling gang alongside flashbacks to his Uncle’s wrestling career in the past, which eventually attracts the attention of other gangsters demanding he throw a big fight.

There’s little effort made to separate present from past, which is confusing until it’s realised that the past is distinguished by black bordered pages as in manga. It’s not as obvious as it might be because artist Rubine frequently bleeds his panels off the page edges, and he draws variations of the same person as all his male characters. Neither does it help that Heroes requires an action artist and Rubine’s people are very stiffly posed.

Looking into the past rather than supplying a story connected with the TV continuity seems a strange choice, but perhaps that’s what Heroes viewers want. Even allowing for that, this is no more than ordinary.

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