The title is slight bait. I think this goes up there in the top 20 things I've ever read/watched. The ambition behind the story, the themes, its conclusivity, its art, most of it is really fantastic. It's a very different beast from the show, which the first season technically only covers up to Issue 13 but adds a ton of both repurposed and original content. But I think the comic's closer focus on Nolan was really important for how the story ends up panning out in the end, and I'm afraid show-watchers might lose the nuance of how normal and kind Nolan was as a dad to Mark before all the shit went down.
If I had criticisms, I think the immediate thought goes to the fights. There are fantastic fights in the whole series. One immediately comes to mind, and it's motherfucking Battle Beast vs. Thragg. Jesus fucking christ that fight is just amazing, and I love that it's just randomly inserted into multiple chapters to essentially paint just how long this fucking fight was overall. Otherwise, I had a hard time getting pumped about some of the fights. They're mostly carried by the consequences of each of the fights, which I think is something this type of series just don't focus on nearly enough. The show drives that even harder, and because it's in every nitty gritty motion, the action drives home far better.
But even in the years that it was made, I have to say the Shounen formula has vastly outdone it. Jojo comes to mind, that they set boundaries to weird and interesting powers and even the one-off villains make the absolute best of their abilities. They do a bit more with fights than just punch and blast and maybe just have some punches be a bit more impactful than others. But as a lot of superhero comics that try to actually tell a convincing story where the fights are relevant to the plot, the consistency or even the weaknesses behind the powers feel a bit arbitrary and case by case basis. Maybe I'm not able to explain properly as it would take a lot of examples, but that's just my feelings on it
Also Mark is like... always within the top 5 strongest people in the world but never the top 3... if that makes sense. So to me, when he's getting his ass beat by random things before basically just randomly deciding to win later on after the necessary consequences happen, it's never convincing to me. Like ok what changed here that let you do this when you tried it before, and it didn't even remotely work? Obviously at the very end, this changes in a convincing way, but I feel like it should've happened long before.
It also just doesn't make sense how some characters are able to survive certain things and then immediately get killed by something that seems far more trivial, say a Viltrumite punch doesn't end their existence, and they'll get killed by a bite or a beam or some shit.
Outside of that, the dialogues do feel a bit awkward or dated sometimes, but some of the issues were like 20 years old. Maybe it's not that bad overall. Mark is certainly not nearly as nuanced in his speech til the very very end, but somebody like Robot might talk smart, and that's enough realism according to the characteristics.
It's actually a bit harder to talk about the goods. I love how he kept bringing on different artists to do story segments that don't involve the main crew. I love the scale of the world and the creativity behind the alien races. It kinda deals with aliens in a banal and very much non-human manner, when other series fall too hard into the trap of making aliens have human standards and culture even though logically it makes 0 sense. I love the pacing of the story, though the convenience of each things happening one after another when they easily could not have wasn't entirely lost on me. But they often do dogpile conflicts, which occasionally feel like dogpiling on for the sake of an excuse for such and such to get involved.
The side characters are fantastic. In the show, I really liked Damien Darkblood and was hoping for a bit more, but I knew b4 going in that in the comics, he was a fucking joke. He immediately disappears in shame even though he got several pages just focusing him sometimes. Robot is obviously one of the best side characters. Like jesus, either you're rooting for him, or you're rooting against him at all points, and they take his character through enough bullshit for all that feeling to genuinely stick. You understand him, and you'll probably stand on either side based on your own preference. Nolan is also just... well it's not immediately obvious that he's the most important character. But he absolutely is. The entire point of the series driving home that there are vastly more worlds where Mark turns evil and sometimes flat out psychopathic was supposed to show that this world's Mark happened not because Mark is inherently good, but because this world's Nolan is just better than most of the other Nolans. Nolan's last convo with Mark was supposed to drive that home, and it's incredibly emotional especially because Mark gives all the credit of who he became to Nolan, but is unable to tell him before he passes away, presumably. It's also great because Nolan thinks Mark is the one who instills that in him, but because the comic focuses on Nolan so much more in the beginning, it works better that we already knew all along that Nolan was the best guy.
Anyways, 10/10, 100% worth reading. This isn't supposed to be an actual critique. There's way more I want to say about the series, and I'm just jotting down immediate thoughts. 10/10 doesn't mean flawless, just that it's up there relatively.
"Iwata was awesome" - Mr. Nintendo
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