Mankind

Based on the Upcoming Epic Broadcast Series, Neal Adams, Marv Wolfman, Dennis Calero, Nathan Edmondson and Bill Sienkiewicz, are the Writers/Cover Artists and Illustrators of the First Graphic Novels Based on a HISTORY™ Program.

The Good:

                The premise is good. Finding a way to make history more visual is a great thing. My daughter sat next to me for more than half the book and did ask questions as to what was going on, so points there.

                The Marathon story. It is one of my favorite periods in history and it was unexpected to see this story during the introduction issue. I figured it would be some huge famous battle, not one that is common but so few actually know.

                I enjoyed the art and color in the book.  With so many different time periods, it was necessary to use them correctly and I believe they did for the most part. The colors are soft; made me feel like it was an old story. Great choice to go soft instead of bold.  The book was actually one of the times I’ve notice how action lines add to the flow of things.

The Bad:

                I majored in World History and taught it for many years, so I need to be careful with this section.

Story selections. I understand that this series is a companion piece to the series on the History Channel. As an adult that enjoys history, I can see myself watching a documentary about the creation of farming to counter bad hunting seasons. I do not see young adults racing home to read about it.

The in between fillers were stupid to me. I do not see the need to create 1 page stories to current History Channel shows. I do not think any reality shows need to have a comic book version. One high quality picture of a guy catching a great white would’ve been a lot better than a drawing of the event.

The outfits. Just a little irritated rant. I just did not understand why Northern Africans who lived 10,000 years ago were dressed in modern Inuit clothing.

 Summary:         

The entire time I was reading the book I was just wondering “Who do they expect to pick up this book?” Glad that is not my problem. Not many kids will pass over superheroes for history.

As for this book in itself, there were 3 main stories. One I enjoyed, one that was ok, and one that bored me. But that is what learning history does. You like what you like and you don’t what you don’t. Since this book will never have continuity, I don’t feel bad in saying it was just ok.

Geek-o-Rama received a copy of this book for the purpose of this review. All thoughts, comments, typos and randomness belong to the individual reviewer.