Reader Friendly: Event Leviathan #6 Review

So, Brian Michael Bendis's first event ended a month ago, and I took a long time to review it, but I'm doing it now. Ehh, that's my general broad feeling towards it. We do get reveals like who is Leviathan; he's Mark Shaw, a Manhunter, like Kate Spencer, who had appearances in the 80's and then a few one-offs here and there. He had an appearance in the season three episode of Arrow, Corto Maltese. The reveal itself, which the entire event itself was hyping up falls flat a little bit. In the context of the comic he reveals himself to Superman, which really hasn't got an impact, maybe if it was Kate then yeah a better bit, but it didn't leave an impact on me. Another issue I had with it, it seemed rushed, like throughout the event there was this subplot, if you could consider it, of Batgirl undercover in Leviathan, that only gets tantamount of service in the end, but is made a big deal, but then again, leaves no impact. We get the two teams of detectives teaming up, for a couple of pages I would've liked to seen, but it gets pushed aside for Lois and Superman's conversation on the events in the issue, which again the the narrative device the comic uses, like all the others. I get the feeling this was supposed to be a 12 issue miniseries, like the Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen books, but probably got truncated, there will be a sequel series so maybe it might be streamlined to help the flow of the story.

But there's still some areas of the comic I liked, Alex Maleev does great work in the art department and Bendis writes a cool scene with Batman's detectives communicated in sign language which was cool and Bendis does give characters little moments. Like I said in earlier reviews, I would love him to do more stuff with Kate Spencer and the Manhunters, he seems to have an affinity for characters like her and I would love her to see her show up in more stuff. I would also love to see him do a Batman and Robin book, I loved how he wrote Damian in this and he is due an appearance in his Legion of Superheroes book, so I might see more of that.

Event Leviathan started off with a lot forward momentum, but just slowly rolled with it, but has it's moments through out the book. Alex Maleev's art is nice to look at and his interpretation of some DC characters are very striking. Not a must read, but still a worth wile effort.