Review: Nowhere Men, Vol. 1: Fates Worse Than Death

Nowhere Men, Vol. 1: Fates Worse Than Death by Eric Stephenson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Meh! Okay, so the book isn't as bad as that, but it does have some issues breaking up a lot of the potential. It's loosely based around these four characters that revolutionized science in the mainstream, had a falling out, and dispersed. A lot of the book follows what happens, but there are two major issues that I see as a reader. One, I don't particularly care about any of these four characters. Two, I have no idea how they managed to pull off their biggest accomplishment. I feel these go hand in hand and the story could have been better by clueing the reader in.

Despite that failing, there is some interesting stuff in this book. The secondary storyline, which follows a group of scientists on a space station, involves a mysterious infection that changes a persons physiology. The results remind me of the X-Men in how varied the changes are and the fact that some of these characters get strange powers. It seems like the idea is to converge these two storylines down the road, but there aren't many hints as to how that is going to happen.

The art is pretty good. The way the book is laid out, particularly with some of the backup pieces that are meant to expand on those four main characters, is a nice touch. It can slow the reading down at times, but it tries something different in the comic medium and attempts to flesh out the setting.

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