Let's Talk About Mr Terrific #4

 

The beginning of a new arc starts,after saving Los Angeles from the attack of the evil villain Brainstorm our hero Michael Holt enters into a deep depression and recluses himself into the dept of the 9th dimension where he is approach by 2 alien creatures asking for help

Lets review Mr Terrific #4

as always the story is as it is in Black and my thoughts are in Blue
SPOILERS!

MISTER TERRIFIC #4 by Eric Wallace and Gianluca Gugliotta

The comic starts with the 2 Aliens that approached Mr Terrific in the last issue telling him about the great menace that inhabits the 9 dimension, The are call The Kryl, the aliens never state their names so I will just reffer them as Alien#1 and Alien #2, they are were soldiers who deserted the Kryl cause they believe in peace and all that while the rest of the Kryl are just a dominative cruel race

And thats pretty much it, thats all the backstory we will ever get from the "villains" on this arc, they are just Conquering Alien, a little cliche to be honest.

Alien 1 & 2 ask Michael for sanctuary on Earth, but is too late, The Kryl's Warship just came completely out of nowhere and blast Michael at the spot without giving them even a second to react, Michael is paralized and we discover that the Aliens were into this trap all along.

there are several problems with this scene

If the Alien 1 & 2 are here to trap Michael, what the hell was the trap? 

I guess you can say that they distract him long enough for the ship to arrive, but the ship appeared so fast it had to be near and if wasnt where did they came from? 

were they just expecting for michael to appear in that right spot at that time?

Michael does remark that they should had observed him for a long time and we see that in issue 2, but Why him exactly?

we never actually get an explanation of what is the 9th dimension or how big it is, so it just feels like a really lame trap. You can resume the whole scene by saying "Michael gets kidnaped by Aliens" but without any logical explanation of anything.

Another problem is the fake story of Aliens 1 and 2, Why did they bother with that?

they go into very fine details saying how evil and powerful the Kryl are and that they are just deserters, this is just to give us as readers grounds to what is happening, but Michael didnt need to know that, they just want to kidnap him they dont need to tell him who or why.

Also like we learn in the last Issue Michael is invisible to technology, so how do they track him?

overall this is just a really rush scene

and there is one more problem about the Aliens but i will point it out on  a next scene.


Michael is taken inside he sees endless rows of cells, each with different alien races, and Michael is impress by the cunning and cruelty of the Kryl to manage to trick and retain all this alien creatures as prisoners and he thinks  =>

...ok

As he moves forward some of the imprisoned aliens start to talk to him but he cant understand them,  he concludes that the belts that the Kryl are using are universal translators which is why they can talk to him and understand him.

and this is the problem i was talking about the Aliens before, How is that Michael doesnt point out the fact that Alien 1 and 2 are talking perfect english? It seems like something worth noting considering that they are running away and never set foot on Earth, so him noticing the translators in this scene is some way to show his smarts on the situation but it doesnt really makes it right. 

but still lost in his thoughts Michael realizes of 2 even harsher realities

#1 Slavery is Bad
and
#2 he is no longer the same person he was before, and by before i mean 1 issue ago

Who is the Villain now, Michael?

REALLY!, i mean really

Michael attack a person who had killed her wife, killed in a very stupid and unrelatable way, Michael felt a human emontion  and he is comparing himself to a group of Alien slavers

The fact that this african american superhero is dealing an issue on slavery which sounds a little forced to be honest, but lets forget about that.
This issue with his depression over what he did to Brainstorm is so stupid and doesnt make any sense at all that just sucks away all the drama of the problem he facing now, he is being kidnap by an alien race, he doesnt know whats going to happen to him, and he is just moping for his own selfsteam issues, give me a break
what is worst is that, this right here is the actual story, you might think that Aliens from other dimensions might be cool but thats not what this arc is about, no, this arc will be about Michael getting over his depression and his depression is caused by something so lame it just doom to have no resonance in the reader.

Finally the aliens put him in a room where they connect him into a machine that reads his mind in a very painfull way, this to discover all his secrets and about his race

This is scene takes 3 pages, and is completely pointless

After being prove Michael wakes up on a very open room completely surrounded by other alien prisoners 
with no means of comunication with the other captives Michael tries to find a common language

Klaatu Barada Nikto

In case you dont get it, this is a refference to the classic  sci-fi movie "The Day The Earth Stood Still" 

this phrase in context was suppouse to be say to the robot as a safeword in case something happen to Klaatu, the alien of the movie, and in the later remake of 2008 is the phrase used to stop the robot from destroying Earth.

but most importantly, this phrase, as wrote in the screenplay of the original movie, HAS NO TRANSLATION!

So basically this is a joke from Michael, in a really awkward moment and that will never be really funny unless you actually get the reference. otherwise you might think that he is just being silly and he is talking a language from Star Trek or something like that

 Its very possible that this words are some kind of insult to this alien in the picture cause he starts attacking Michael very quickly, Michael starts dodging his attacks while thinking about his situation, a way to escape and also about the science involved to escape like the fifth law of of infinite fractal mechanics(there is no such thing btw), his T-Spheres are not working but he still has his T-Mask(why didnt the Kryl take it?), his Mask is what allows him to be invisible to technology(so how was he captured?) so he can modify it to use to open his cage.

As he eludes the attacks of the alien from the cover another Giant Purple Alien grabs the first alien with his hands and toss him into the ground and yells at him, saving michael

 Michael mimes to the purple alien to take 2 spikes from the other aliens back to use as tools.
which he uses to modify his mask to open the gate
as he does this he wonders if the laws of physics that worked with his mask will apply in this new and unknown dimension

And it does Work, with this Michael and the other aliens escape and when he see the first set of Kril he ask them a very important Question

hmm.

Ok, What the Hell just happen?

Why did the purple Alien help Michael? 

Why did he needed the spikes of the back of the other alien, doesnt he carries tools? 

How would those spikes serve as tools exactly?

Why are there no cameras in this highly advanced prision?

Why is Michael in this cell with other aliens when we saw individual cells in the beginning?

Specially if Michael is so important to look for him so closely why risk the fact of him being injure by the other aliens?

Why did the alien from the cover attacked Michael?

 If the aliens started a fighing between themselves so easily why doesnt the Kryl have any methods to stop the fight like any other prison?

Why there arent any guards checking the cells?

Why there are no alarms sounding the exact second they escape?

Why there is no crown control?

Michael punch one of the guards and Finally the alarm sounds, Michael takes the belt of the Kryl so now he can communicate with his Posse, the Purple Alien is named Urdron and he tells him that he will follow him(why?)
Urdron tells michael that the back up guards are clossing in to which Michael says

THE END

WOW! that was bad

I said that the "its because im white!" moment of issue #1 is the worst moment in the entire series but this issue is definitely the worst single issue

I commented more about the comic than actually retracing it cause pretty much every scene is full with flaws and plotholes

The issue can be resume with 4 lines
-Michael gets kidnapped by Aliens
-He is depress
-The aliens mentally Probe him
-He escapes

everything else is just details that have no.importance at all.
This is the first issue that we get completely devoted on Michael and he just doesnt shine on his own on anyways
his capture is lackluster and poorly executed and his escape has a ton of questions, is the quintessential of Lazy writing, a Mary Sue, or in this case a Marty Stu

for those who dont know, a Mary sue a character, often portray in fanfiction as someone as an improve reflection of the writer, the character is often portray as someone with too many talents, some often unnecessary and in many cases the whole Plot bends to the will and convenience of this character

which is exactly what is happening here, literaly the Laws of physics get bend only so Michael can escape, the Alien who helps him understands just by looking at him, that he is the new leader and capeble enough to break them out without having michael to put a single effort on it.

Michael is an expert fighter and an Olympic atlete we could have seen him defeat the alien from the cover with his own hands, that would make the idea of having this giant purple guy following him believable for the next chapter, instead the alien just steps in and then Michael mimes him for another favor on the next page.

and this book just wastes a lot of space, we get a 2 issue spread where Michael is mentally tortured and we see a vision the last arc, but it does nothing here, Spoiler alert! the Aliens do absolutely nothing with the knowledge of Michael, so what was the point?

and finally the whole angle of Michael's depression is completely stupid, is brought into the first half of the issue with himself saying how low he is and once he is in the cell the very first thing he does is make an stupid joke that no one will get
 

The art, was actually very decent here, there are still certain problems with the face of Michael but the Aliens look ok and all stand out and all the backgrounds are great

but even that doesnt forgive the shortcomings of this chp
Overall is just boring, poorly written and lazy

1 OUT OF 10