One of Bluewater Comics’ primary publishing initiatives is their work with the legendary Ray Harryhausen. Along with this book, they are publishing a number of comics hat serve as sequels to the great mater’s film work. WRATH OF THE TITANS, a follow-up to CLASH, has turned out to be a solid effort, using its script to explain to newcomers what’s happening along the way. Unfortunately, this book cannot say the same for itself.

Readers familiar with my reviews will know that I always begin by offering a summary of the plot in my opening paragraph and that happens to be missing here. Why? Because as I read these, I had no idea what was going on. Nada.

Sure, I pieced some of it together. A mission to Venus gone wrong, horrible creatures that came back to Earth, some experiments gone wrong. But by jumping in at issue two, I was lost, which was unnecessary.

I’ve gone on this tangent with other books before, but I’ll say it again: every issue of a comic has the potential to be someone’s first (that was Jim Shooter’s credo as EIC of Marvel, by the way). A front-cover recap is an absolute must. Even Marvel does it these days. If you haven’t seen the original movie (I haven’t) or read issue one (I haven’t), it’s imperative to give the new reader a chance to enter the world of your comic and understand it. Otherwise, you’re limiting your audience. After all, if they can’t understand issue two, why would they go back and buy issue one?

What’s in these issues is executed at a competent, professional level, but I had trouble seeing what was on the page beyond that. Even some on-panel exposition (“My Name is Wally West. I’m the fastest man alive, etc.”) would have done the trick of creating a door for the reader. Instead, I feel it would be more pertinent to wait for a trade collection and see it in its entirety.

Marc Mason