KISS # 1, 2

Kiss # 1, 2

Publisher: Dynamite
Writer: Amy Chu
Art: Kewber Baal

This title should have been subtitled: Music From The Elder. It sure takes a lot of cues from that Epic concept album. It starts out with narration that are lyrics from ‘A World Without Heroes’ and our central location is ‘Blackwell’ City. Presented in such a way that evokes ‘Mr. Blackwell, you can go to Hell.’

The plot is simple and ageless: A city in a post-apocalyptic world that seem idealistic threatens to have its secrets revealed by four teenagers who stumble upon the truth, Twins Noa and Eran and their friends, Adi and Alex. In this cases the truth is brought to them by the Avatars of the original city ‘Elders:’ The Demon, Starchild, Celestial and Catman.



The story is simple and overdone, but makes some sense considering the source material. However the writing itself doesn’t quite hold up. There are a few jumps in logic and holes that make one scratch their head.

Case in point: When the current Elders are informed that someone has trespassed in the forbidden areas, they seemed shocked – with one claiming it impossible. In the same scene, one of the same Elders orders the Twins to be brought to them. If the Elders were shocked at the news, how would they know about the Twins? Unless this is resolved later, it’s a jump in logic.

The story is tried, true and trodden, and the writing just above average, the art saves this title.

The line art, the coloring especially and the inking, combine to make KISS look great. The art makes up for the faults in the writing, and we end up with a title that is beautiful to look at.

But if the art saves the title, Lettering, Editing and Quality Control knock it down. All of these are poor on the first issue. The Lettering is the issue, it is nice and easy to read, but the word balloons often point to the wrong character.

Once, or twice are passable errors, but this was enough times that it became problematic and weakened the story. At first I was unsure who was named what, or talking about what. It caused a lot of confusion, and lowered any enjoyment.

This is unacceptable, and should have been caught long before going to print. That an Editor’s job.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

As with almost all KISS comics, it is basically KISS ARMY only.
I wanted to give these two issues a glowing review, but I can’t. Great to look at, but average writing and word balloons issues drag it down.

RATING: 4.75