REVIEW: The Unexpected #4 by Steve Orlando, Yvel Guichet, Cary Nord, Scott Hanna, Jeromy Cox, & Carlos M. Mangual

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By Zack Quaintance — The Unexpected has featured locales, ideas, and lore from throughout the DCU…and now in issue #4, we get other heroes, too, right from page 1 panel 1. New characters in superhero comics often face world-ending threats, and a natural question becomes why don’t they reach out to the experienced shared universe heavy hitters? This story nicely addresses that, making for another strong single issue in one of my favorite new Big 2 books in ages.

As an individual issue, The Unexpected #4 clearly has a specific goal to reach before its end, and it definitely gets there, landing in a place that promises a new evolution for the book in #5. Along the way, we see our new heroes—Firebrand and Neon the Unknown—study their plight with the tense aid of Bat-family detectives. We also see another of the grandiose set pieces that have so far appeared in every issue, plus a continued push to address the aftermath of DC’s recent Dark Nights Metal event, extending plot points from that story to new and interesting places, essentially contextualizing what happened into the history and future of the DCU.

That’s all to say writer Steve Orlando’s main strengths are very much on display here: his vast and impressive command of continuity, his commitment to taking the shared universe concept seriously, and his ability to have muscle-bound folks punching each other with stakes.

Art-wise, the book is in transition. Cary Nord, on-board from issue one, is off to G. Willow Wilson’s forthcoming run on Wonder Woman, launching in November. That leaves us with the team of Yvel Guichet and Scott Hanna, plus Jeromy Cox providing colors. And this book looks good, to be sure. Next issue will see Mark Farmer drawing, followed by Ronan Cliquet. There’s no reason to believe future installments will suffer, but if we could just take a brief moment in honor of Nord’s contributions. He will be missed.

Anyway, with The Unexpected I remain impressed by how compelling the team has made original characters—no easy feat within a publishing line of adventures that span many decades. The book being a natural extension of Metal helps. Thematically, I think The Unexpected also addresses an idea prominent in the post-Metal DCU: restraint. In surviving Metal, the Justice League broke the source wall, ushering in complex threats. The Unexpected’s central use of the volatile Nth Metal builds on that. Here, we have a powerful character who must resist giving into violent urges, lest she destroy herself and maybe the world, as threats accelerate around her. In many ways, it’s a metaphor for 2018, and I love it.

Overall: The Unexpected continues to be a standout book of DC’s New Age of Heroes line, expertly incorporating bits of the DCU’s past while making an argument for being part of its future. Artist Cary Nord’s departure is a bummer, but this book clearly still has big plans. 8.5/10

For more comic book reviews, check out our review archives.

Zack Quaintance is a journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at @zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.

REVIEW: The Unexpected #1 by Steve Orlando, Ryan Sook, Cary Nord, & Team

The Unexpected #1 cover by Ryan Sook.

The Unexpected by Steve Orlando, Ryan Sook, and Cary Nord is the eighth and final book of the New Age of DC Heroes line, and—to be direct—it is also the best.

More on New Age of Heroes later, but first let’s talk about what works for this debut. Strength one is the seamless efficiency with which the book familiarizes readers with an entirely new hero, one whose meta-human situation is (improbably) a somewhat fresh concept. Without giving too much away, our protagonist has a condition in which she must physically fight every 24 hours, lest her heart shut down. Our protagonist also happens to be a fearless nurse, one who has treated bystanders in a number of recent DCU mega events (Darkseid Wars, Black Lanterns, Crime Syndicate, etc.). This creates an interesting dichotomy between her meta-human self—who must be violent to live—and her alter-ego, who is dedicated to healing.

This is all made clear within three pages via an intro and killer two-page spread. With questions answered about who the hero is and why readers should care, the creative team then goes full bore into putting its hero to the test with challenges and twists, and ho man are there ever twists. In fact, The Unexpected’s second major strength is how quickly and confidently it subverts reader expectations, going to an—ahem—unexpected and darker place than previews suggested.

And that’s the third major strength: pacing. There is a confidence to this Orlando, Sook, and Nord story that keeps the pages turning like an action movie with well-realized stakes, freeing Orlando to dispense killer, quintessential anti-hero lines like, “I fight to live and I’m undefeated,” lines he honed during his run on Midnighter (2015) and seems thrilled to be writing again. Sook and Nord’s art, brought to life by inkers Mike Gray and Wade von Grawbadger and colorist FCO Plascencia, is also top tier. Sook’s character designs are especially impressive, creating original aesthetics for a previously-unseen batch of superheroes, all of which are unique while also fitting into the DC Universe...which brings us back to discussing the New Age of DC Heroes.

I’m reading and enjoying many of the line's titles (shout outs to Sideways and The Terrifics). One knock, however, has been that the books were marketed as driven by big name artists, yet many of the biggest names left after early issues. As it applies to The Unexpected, Sook seemingly departed at the start to draw Man of Steel #3 (perhaps contributing to this book’s tardy debut), but Cord’s work is strong. Essentially, it remains to be seen if artist turnover will be a problem here, given that this first issue was such a collaboration.

All the character designs in The Unexpected are good, but the Bad Samaritan stands above.

Spare Thoughts: The Bad Samaritan has one of the best villain designs I’ve ever seen, and whoever came up with that name for the bad guy should be proud.

This book ties into Metal in multiple interesting ways, giving it the most direct connection to the event of any in the line.

Overall: Unexpected #1 is the best debut of the New Age of DC Heroes line, delivering a compelling protagonist with conflicting priorities that pit her needs versus her desires. Add a confident, intriguing twist that subverts expectations, and The Unexpected could very well be DC’s best new original book since New Super-Man. 9.3/10

Zack Quaintance is a career journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at @zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.