Review: Men Of War #1 (Brandon & Derenick)

After all these years — Sgt. Rock is back! But as with all the New 52 titles, it's not the Rock my daddy grew up with!

Modern military, modern weapons and a modern tale await you as you wade through the most "human" of tales to emerge from the DCnU. We see Rock as a man who doesn't want to be any kind of leader, but will do anything to make sure the all the boys come home. This is a typical "origin" type tale, one that has a twist as to how Corporal Rock becomes Sgt. Rock. One that will tie a cast of all too human characters to the more "super" aspects of the DCnU.

This tale was mediocre at best, never really capturing the reader as to the true emotion of the Rock character. Besides being berated by his superiors, you never get to learn any history for Rock, which unfortunately, is a death blow to a character that modern readers can scarcely remember. Hindering this book further, is the unstable art. The characters were too similar in their renderings to even truly know what was happening to whom at any given moment. One instant it was if Derenick was firing on all cylinders and the next, it was if he was trying to copy Darick Robertson. I liked the drab and weary colors by Wilson, it brought the perfect mood for a war story, but it just wasn't enough to get me to grab issue two of this series.

This book was banking on the nostalgia factor to bring readers back to a comic icon of a character. Unfortunately, there wasn't much live ammo in the magazine to get all the way through the tale. Good concept but not good enough execution. "Draw the line at $2.99" and don't waste four bucks on this one!