The Last of the Greats
Average Rating - 5.5
The Last of the Greats is the first installment in a limited series which follows the mysterious “Greats”, a group of super powered siblings who mysteriously arrive on Earth with a mission to save it.
Last of the not so Greats
The story begins with an odd twist , the death of the Greats , all that is except one that had been keeping himself hidden away from humanity. The now deceased Greats were shown to have been “born” from arks which appeared in the geographic center on every continent except Antarctica, they mimicked the appearance of the human inhabitants and set about saving society from itself.
“The start was amazing but the rest of the story didn’t live up to it” - Remi
Despite the fact that the Greats tried to turn earth into a peaceful, disease free, and equal world humanity not trusting their motives turned on them and destroyed their arks and therefore the Greats themselves. In their eagerness to rid themselves of the Greats one was missed, a final Great residing in Antarctica who is now their only hope to stop a massive alien invasion.
“I didn’t find their was much story in it” - Mathieu
The last Great unlike his siblings shows no interest in bettering humanity and more often than not seems to prefer killing people to helping them. In public he behaves similarly to his lost brothers and sisters but privately he is uncaring, violent, and cold. His motivations and his attitude towards humanity as well as some of the subplots the story introduces were left disappointingly unexplored and left both the character and the story rather flat.
“The characterization was very inconsistent, just acting evil for the sake of being evil” - Jeff
Art
For the most part the art in The Last of the Greats was sub par. The character design was boring and unoriginal, the line work looked lazy and in some cases unfinished, and the colorist overused blue so often you’d swear they ran out of other colors.
“There was nothing special about the characters” - Jamie
The majority of panels featured a combination of blunt heavy line work and semi blurred wispy lines that left everything either over or under emphasized. In addition the colorist used a lot of bright , and once again mostly blue, highlighting which ended up making the line work look even worse.
“The art was alright, it gets better as it goes” - Dave
Overall it looked very hit and miss, some panels obviously had a lot of time spent on them and then others like the crowd panel above are so hastily slapped together that you can easily see people in repeated poses or spot the guy who is apparently twice as large as anyone else in the crowd, not to mention the fact that his head and arms are the same washed out color as his shirt. In short lazy!
Summary
The best thing to be said about The Last of the Greats is that its not the worst thing I’ve ever read. Most of us agreed that we wouldn’t actively dissuade people from reading it but we definitely wouldn’t recommend it. The first five issues go no where leaving you feeling like you read the prologue not the first installment of what had the potential to be a great story. The idea behind the attempt was definitely a good one but both the story telling and the art failed to provide anything really worthy of catching your attention and instead ends up reading like a series of failed attempts to shock the reader without any real substance behind it.
“Too weak, I wont buy the next book” - Scott
“Thought it was gonna be awesome but nothing really happened” - Matt
“Thought it was gonna be awesome but nothing really happened” - Matt
Ratings
Picked the book : Ray - Rating 8
“ Really fun read, not too intense”
Harshest Critic: Keenan - Rating 4
“ The story wasn’t laid out well, the writing left a lot to be desired”
Besting Rating: Ray - Rating 8
