Forces Weak and Strong at Work

Good try, very comforting.

Volume 1 of The Terrifics, titled Meet the Terrifics, is initially a get the team together arc. Lemire manages that by having Mr. Terrific's company bought up by Simon Stagg while Terrific was off doing something involving other dimensions. Stagg's presence means Metamorpho's there, as well as that Stagg will be messing with some science he doesn't understand. Namely, a door to the "Dark Multiverse".

Plastic Man was involved in the multi-dimension stuff, so Terrific brings him along. Except Plas has been in some sort of comatose state for 5 years, until the otherwordly energies wake him up. Lemire's going for a more volatile version of the Fantastic Four, and having Terrific (and Batman, apparently) basically keep Plas around for all that time, making no attempt to find something else that might awaken him, or locate anyone who might care about Plastic Man, is certainly Reed Richards at his worst.

A signal picked up through the doorway takes those 3 into the Dark Multiverse, where they find Phantom Girl (or a Phantom Girl, at least) stranded on a giant corpse, along with the machine sending the signal. She's able to bum a ride back to the right dimension, but understandably wants to go home. As does Plas, and Terrific just wants to study these readings and figure out who "Tom Strong" is. Metamorpho's arguing with his girlfriend Sapphire about what a crumb her dad is.

So Lemire concocts the idea that dark multiverse energy has bonded them, so they can't be more than a mile apart. Then he throws together a few other threats to basically force them to actually do stuff, since otherwise each of the four seem content to sulk otherwise. The end of the trade reveals a mysterious figure in a metal mask, who promises he'll find and kill Tom Strong first, nyah nyah. It feels like the pacing got wonky, because the end of issue 6 starts having multiple full-page splashes, one after the other. The last 11 pages have 23 panels total, so I don't know if Lemire intended more struggle for the cast before they triumphed, or Dr. Dread's monologue was supposed to last longer, but something definitely feels off.

The book has 3 pencilers in 6 issues. Ivan Reis is gone by the end of issue 2, replaced by Joe Bennett for the fight with the War Wheel in issue 3. Then Evan Shaner handles issues 4 and 5 before Bennett returns for issue 6, which is the second part of a story about an entire town being slowly turned into Metamorphos.

Bennett's art can at least lean in the same general direction of Reis', though Bennett's characters are bulkier and drawn with a much busier line. A lot of hatching and trying for extra texture, especially on Plastic Man and Metamorpho. Reis' Plastic Man is very smooth and almost artificially clean, while Bennett tends to draw him with sharper angles and joints, almost like his version is trying to mimic having knuckles or actual goggles on his face, rather than the goggles being part of him, which I assume is what's going on.

Shaner's work doesn't look a bit like either of the others, keeping his characters much cleaner and simpler in design and look. None of the artists seem to do a lot with Metamorpho's ability to change shape, but I guess with Plastic Man (who basically never holds one form or set of proportions for more than a panel) it feels redundant. Nathan Fairbairn colors Shaner's issues with brighter, more sharply defined tones than Marcelo Maiolo does for Reis and Bennett. Maiolo may be going for something closer to realistic coloring and shading. They both seem to work for the artist they're paired with.

Lemire writes Metamorpho as gruff and sarcastic, bickering constantly with Plastic Man, who is basically never serious. Mr. Terrific just seems exhausted by everyone else's presence, and whenever he's not barking orders, it feels like he's talking out loud to himself more than any of the others. Phantom Girl is alternately petulant and impatient, frustrated that when she tries to turn solid, she disintegrates whatever she touches. She's the youngest, so you see the guys each trying to help in their own way. Plas tries to keep her spirits up, Terrific gets a journal she can use without destroying it so she can interact with something.

It does feel like a book that's struggling to hold itself together, and not just because of the shifting art teams. Dread has to reveal himself to goad Terrific into pursuing him, by presenting Tom Strong as an answer to Terrific's questions. Lemire's version of Holt seems mostly interested in Tom Strong because he doesn't know who he is or how he encountered the giant creature floating in the void. He just wants to pull apart a mystery, but there isn't a sense of why the others would care, except they seem to figure Terrific is the best chance to break this bond between them. So they could just refuse to go until he fixes it. He can't go more than a mile without them, and he doesn't seem to really want them around anyway, so why not focus on that first? Prioritize!