Post originally by Atom Man at 2004-05-21 07:33:00
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Good job. I was halfway through writing my own review, saw yours, and concluded that you made virtually every point that I would have addressed.
So I'll just underscore a few things.
(1) They did an absolutely marvelous job on the format for the character stats. It's the best I've seen for M&M.
(2) I agree that they struck a very nice balance in character background. The backgrounds contain plenty of plot hooks, but the "setting" is simple and light enough to avoid overwhelming whatever campaign the characters are dropped into.
(3) By and large, they did a fine job of using the basic rules in a creative fashion to model character types. I certainly got some new ideas.
(4) Some of the characters are just plain outstanding. Film Noir, who you mentioned, is brilliant.
Tiny points where I might differ.
(1) Like you, I was a little disappointed in the cover. But then I saw what they had on hand for the original cover - - and I'm glad they made the change. Derrick Thomas is credited with about 99% of the artwork. His "portrait" work is excellent. In fact, it ranks with some of the best RPG superhero artwork I've seen. He's also great when it comes to cool vehicles and buildings, etc. And all of this this is what 90% of the book contains. But .... he is not quite there, IMHO, when it comes to composing action scenes or group shots - such as we find on some of the splash pages. At that point, for some reason, his work feels just a little forced and cartoony. (He's not alone in this. I think a lot of illustrators have a tough time translating super-actioned spandex into big black & white splash pages.) Overall, I think the final art direction played to his strengths and avoided his weaknesses.
(2) I think I would give the writers a little higher marks on their new feats. They did solve a couple character modeling problems for me - especially for vehicles and "know-it-alls."
(3) The hero-team backgrounds were okay,but I guess I wasn't quite as charmed as you were. I thought, overall, that they did a better job on the villains.
But then, being a professional super villain myself, I'm probably biased about that.
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