Youngblood #1

       You can fill up pages and pages of stuff about the early days of Image and how it was a game changer for comics. Most of us know the history, we all know how Image came to be, but I'm not getting into that. I am delving into Youngblood issue number one. This is one of those comics everyone expected to be worth a lot of money but I picked up my copy for three bucks and I only bought it because I've been finding Image comics in the dollar bin so I may as well beef up my collection right? The early Image stuff was mostly hit or miss but man, people loved this stuff back in the day but there were often delays on the titles and don't get me started on the collectible crap that often came with these books. You often had to buy two issues because they came polybagged with a trading card which seemed cool at the time, but now it's just a pain in the neck. It wasn't just Image either. The nineties saw issue number one of X-Men come out with a bunch of variant covers so you of had to buy them all to show people how cool you were.

        Anyway on to my review of the debut of Youngblood and wow, this one is already interesting because it's two books in one. You get two stories and here's the kicker, two covers and in order to read the second story you have to flip the book over.  Now I'm not sure which story you're supposed to read first and I was under the impression that these two stories were somehow linked together. They are not and are meant to showcase the two teams that make up Youngblood. Great way to set up a comic Liefeld. Sure, it's an interesting idea that proves you're edgy and you almost feel like your gaining something when a comic is presented this way. Okay, the covers look good, but what about the inside? This is a debut issue right? There should be some kind of history right? Some setup to get you invested in these characters?

                                                       

       No, Youngblood is a clunky mess that has very little story. If you like action comics with very little plot you're going to love this. I even figured out how to read these stories but it doesn't really matter does it? There's an away and a home team and I'm assuming the away team is for outside of America and the Home team is for you know, home. Anyway, the art here is typical Liefeld's art is something you either love or hate so if you hate it, be prepared to have the veins in your forehead throbbing. You know what you're getting into so I won't tell you how bad some of it is. The bodies don't look right, the feet are weird and some of the art even obscures the art in another panel. It's just a mess at times, but the story is good right? No, you would be wrong. In the first story some bad guys break out of jail and Youngblood stops them. Yeah, there's a fight and the comic just ends. The second story is a little better with the away team stopping a terrorist by the name of Hassan Kussein. I'm not making this up I swear! You know the outcome without me spoiling it for you. Yeah, as a first issue there's not much here to entice readers to invest in these characters. The dialogue is laughable and clunky which isn't a good sign for a new title a company wants you to invest in. It seemed that Liefeld wanted to create something unique while at the same time shooting himself in the foot with a comic that does little to propel a story forward. You can see where this is going. A lot of hitting and cheesy dialouge with no thought or effort to make the comic any good. 

          I think I may have a few more issues of this but I only bought them because they were so cheap. I wanted to see for myself what the early Image comics were like without all the delays and promises of books coming out when they weren't coming out in a timely manner. Youngblood isn't a good debut issue at all. It's a mess but it didn't have to be. Some one could have stopped this and presented something unique, something that made Image stand apart from DC and Marvel. Youngblood just doesn't feel like a finished comic which doesn't bode well for a new company. If this is your flagship title you should put more effort into it, or at least give us one story with some back story on who these characters are and why I need to care about them. Maybe I missed an issue that presented all of that, but either way, Youngblood is a comic that is dated and proves that Image in the early days was all hype and no substance. If you can find a copy cheap pick one up, but this is an issue you can skip and not feel bad about.