Wisdom #1 (of 6)

Paul Cornell & Trevor Hairsine

Bad boy secret ops agent Pete Wisdom gets his own MAX mini-series, the debut issue of which hit stores this past Wednesday. This mature readers adventure pits Wisdom against a swarm of faerie who have been massacring humans unprovoked. A group of secret ops agents back Wisdom up as he travels to the Otherworld to put an end to the madness. Among those along for the ride are fiery faerie Tink and a clairsentient who senses something worse than faerie coming to wreak havoc.

This story reminds me a tad bit of Excalibur because it's very British and has a sort of goofy edge. But this is certainly not Excalibur by any means and if that was the intention of this mini-series, it has failed utterly. It has also failed to be very entertaining. Plenty of characters are introduced in this issue that moves along at an extremely fast clip with little direction and cheesy pages of characters posing saying things meant to be funny that aren't like "Morning. We're MI-13, and we haven't had our breakfast" following over-the-top explosions. Readers are left with too little characterization among too big a cast, and too much action with brisk, poorly executed battles. There are some creepy images integrated into the otherwise average art, with plenty of gore and insults to (maybe?) justify this as a MAX title. Too bad Marvel's idea of a "mature readers" line isn't very mature and turns out crap like this. D-