REVIEW: Black Condor issue #1 & 2

Writer: Brian Augustyn
Artist: Rags Morales
Colors: Eric Kachelhofer
Review: Madman

A few years back I came across some issues of Black Condor in a lowly, yellowed long box at this local large consignment-type dirt mall I frequent from time to time (same place I found Iron Fist #11 for less then two bucks). I snatched them up for the simple fact that I’d never heard of the Black Condor, as I don’t frequent the DCU much, and I dig characters that dress as birds and fly around. Not sure why, really, I just do. Adrian Toomes…big fan. Sam Wilson…big fan (The movie version is fantastic. Good on you Anthony Mackie). Hawkman (one of the few DC characters I follow) and Archangel (meh on Angel) . . . I’m on board.

Sooooo yeah, Black Condor, why not? I never actually read said rescued Black Condor books, I just bagged them and threw them in the box with my meager DC comic collection, promptly forgetting about them until recently when I stumbled across issues 1 & 2 in a 50¢ box at the local funny book convention. Was it fate?



Yeah, I hated this comic almost immediately. The character gains his powers in four panels on the first page and by page 2 Ryan Kendall is soaring the skies as Black Condor and has claimed the Pine Barrens of New Jersey as his domain. New Jersey?!!! What self-respecting hero sets up shop in New Jersey? The “main action” shows up in the form of a van full of bandits on the run from the law dogs and, as is par for the course, they’re your cliché band of riffraff with the asshole leader, your normal bland followers, and the stupid idiot. Anywho, the Condor ends up in pursuit almost as if on cue. BUT Condor is having a tough time of, you know, doing anything that’s actually productive because he’s nested in a damn pine forest in BFE NEW JERSEY! (For the record out of the 50 or so trees in this comic, none of them were pine trees . . .) He can’t see through the canopy! Oh sure, he eventually catches the crooks after the village idiot crashes their getaway van into a tree…which was exciting because I wouldn’t have to suffer through anymore of this waste of paper. The writing was super-lame and the art was off, too. Rags Morales drew Ryan Kendall’s face like a normal dude from the front, but Kendall looked like some kind of deformed grotesquery in his profile shots. The colors were really poorly done as well, in quite a few panels it looks like Mr. Kachelhofer totally forgot to color in the details. The skin tone he slapped on the character looks worse then the worst orange spray tan ever, and I mean EVER. So that was that. My curiosity about this Black Condor business has run its course, and I shall scream my contempt at the Heavens. I’m not even going to waste my time with the 2nd issue.  A pine forest in New Jersey . . .

You have got to be kidding me, DC.