Let's Talk About Mr Terrific #6

 

On the last arc Michael Holt save an entire group of slaves from the interdimensional conquerors, the Kryl

now Valentines Day

 Before beginning i need add that once again Gianluca Gugliotta didnt draw this issue and was replaced by Oliver Nome, fill ins are nothing unusual in comics but to have an artist who is completely unable to draw 3 issues in a row is just ridicoulous, Gianluca will however draw the last 2 issues, which by the time of the release of issue #5 was already announced as final issues

Black is the story

Blue is my comments

SPOILERS!

MISTER TERRIFIC #6 by Eric Wallace and Oliver Nome

Our story begins NOW!

Somewhere really cold

Mr Terrific fights the the Tomorrow thief, Michael is heavily wounded cause of a fall, his T-spheres dont work, he is freezing, Tomorrow thief has ghost like abilities, he is stealing high tech, and he is psychopath, and today is valentine's day

and also Mr Terrific is trying to kill him

As soon as we open the first page we are greeted by a ton of black boxes describing in great detail what is happening, and simply because of the rushed nature of this scene and the "NOW" sign in the top of the page we can expect a flashback or several to explain the situation, the giant problem is, we really have no reason to care. The reason why we shouldnt care about this flashbacks is simple, we already know what happen, there is very little dialog in this scene but Michael already told us everything we need to know and thats a giant mistake cause it breaks one of the first rules of storytelling in comics SHOW DON'T TELL!

thats the problem with this opening, there is no tension on it, and and the same time it is going to suck away the tension and suspense of the next scenes, simply we already know what is going to happen, we are missing a couple of details like "why are they fighting for"but because of the scenario and conditions we can guess pretty quickly as the story moves forward.

And also one more thing as the picture aboves shows, Michael was trying to kill him, cause either he knows that the ice spike will pass through him and it was an stupid thing to do, or he didnt knew and since it was aimed to his head it would had killed him, our hero!

The next scene jumps to the past

24 hours ago we are in the conference room of Holt Ind, with all of the executives in the company and we will finally know who will be the succesor of michael in the Holt industries as it has been brought out several times in the past few issues

and the new successor is Jamal

who?

oh dont worry we get a very convenient exposition dumb on him as he arrives, now he just gets this job

so what about this?

well nothing really

this is a subplot that goes exactly nowhere, there is no point on this scene at all, and is probably cause Wallace wasnt expecting the book to be cancel so soon so there wont be a proper follow up

or even a proper build up

why is Jamal being name the new big head of the company, why did michael choose him exactly?

what was the point of all of this and what is the point from Jamal's perspective, those are things that just wont have any answer.

well we immediately cut back/forward to 

now there is no transition between this and the 24hours earlier to the NOW time, but im going to assume that this doesnt mean that we are 31 hours before the fight with Tomorrow Man

Dr Lily, just created a new railroad in Iceland, its suppose to be a great achievement and it will also impulse Iceland's economy, but Michael is riding the train to flirt with ms lily some more. 

Its hinted that Dr lily is an ex-girlfriend and michael is here just to ride the train, and thats all.

we cut forward to 

Where Donald and Aleeka are having dinner

Donald is commenting with Aleeka that Michael gave his company to a 16yo as a matter of an experiment and Aleeka gives Jamal the benefit of the doubt
Donald once again is luring Aleeka into the dark side but she doesnt buy it.                                                                           

Once again we cut to Michael in the train where, Lily and Michael talk about the train, it is apparently impulsed by something call Kinetic Rail Capacitor, or KRC in short, Michael design the project and Lily build it.

Then the TOMORROW THIEF appears, announcing his own name while he stands horizontally on one side of the train, his goal is to, steal the KRC that is powering the train.

Why is he doing this while the train is in movement?, in broad day light, while the train is full of ppl...

nevermind

 

Michael talks to Tomorrow Thief and in a very unintentionally hilarious scene throws Michael out of the train
But miraculously Michael survived
not with the help of any of his gatgets
no, that would kind of make sense
nop
he is simply thrown from an experimental BULLET TRAIN, AT HIGH SPEED, over a couple of feet from the ground
but no, he is perfectly fine in the next scene. 

Thats exactly what happens in the scene, i dont need to point out what is wrong with it 

Michael is fine and well and he suits up using his T-Spheres, Tomorrow Thief steals the KRC and flees the train using a jetpack and then we cut to

 

Really?

When Michael and TT start their fight, Michael destroys TT's Jetpack and TT Overloads his T-Spheres and short-circuit his connection with them. 

which we already knew thanks to the first scene of the issue.

Completely overpowered by the Tomorrow Thief, Michael decide to do the most reasonable thing and is destroy the KRC

This is probably the first time that i have seen Michael do something actually really clever, it was a good strategy

This ofcourse bothers Tomorrow Thief and they continue with their fight

for the next half an hour until

Mr Terrific finds an Ice cave with a continently position volcanic activity which generates some extreme high temperature water springs
TM surprises him from behind and then Michael proceeds to make a judo move throwing him into the volcanic lake.

If im reading it correctly, Michael just left the guy to die a horrible slow death.

OUR HERO!

and finally realizing that he is in the middle of nowhere Michaels comes to only 1 solution to survive
he throws himself into an ICY COLD LAKE

And finally we cut to 

where Michael explains how being frozen yourself can save your life

and the comic ends with  Michael saying Happy Valentine's Day to Lily

Next time

THE END

This was very Dull and underwhelming

I talk and comment less here than any other installment cause there is really nothing much to say, the issue is full with padding and meaningless conversations that add nothing to the plot  like most of the conversations with Lily and the subplot of the Holt Industries is just there and doesnt do much, but ignoring all the stupid twists and plot holes in the book, it has a huge flaw which is the Flashback story engine.
This kind of storytelling never works well unless we get a surprising huge twist or revelation at the last instance, which this issue doesnt do and even if its done right its very hard to pull, it gets very distracting very fast.
The sequences have little to nothing to do with each other except at the end where the action sequence is break in 3 pieces but on the wrong order, being place like this do absolutely nothing, instead it chooses to dump a massive amount of exposition at the start so it kills completely any surprise that we might get in the next pages
we know Michael is going to fall, that he is going to loses his t-spheres, etc

The fights are unimaginative, Mr Terrific describes himself as being hurt, but he doesnt look hurt or act hurt

We know absolutely nothing of Tomorrow Thief just what we are being told by Michael, and he is just a very one dimensional villain, why is he called the Tomorrow Thief? Is he from the future?

why are his cloths so similar to Mister Terrific's?

and overall, he is just a thief, nothing else, but Michael really goes really angry and hard at him, he calls him a psychopath when he was to only person being hurt by him, and then he tortures him at the end to take him out, it just feels very unnecessary and hard to side with michael cause once again TT is nothing but a common thief, it just not very important.

the end is campy, and unnecessarily campy, if Michael found a volcanic spring which im going to assume had warm water on it, why did he needed to froze himself
was the crying for help of TM to bothering?

and finally and probably the worst of all, THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH VALENTINES DAY

this was a huge leap from the last issue

I give it a 2 out of 10