The Victories #2 Review

Title: The Victories #2
Writer: Mike Oeming
Art: Mike Oeming
Publisher: Dark Horse

Another superhero comic. It’s easy to think that going into Oeming’s The Victories. And while you’d technically be correct, you’d also be about as wrong as a Liefeld character without a pouch. Or shoulder pads. Or… well, you get it.

Yeah, The Victories is actually really fun. Faustus, the main character (and team member of “superhero” faction The Victories) is best described in recipe format:

One Batman
Half a Spider-Man
A pinch of violentness
A dash of red
One scarf

And voila! That’s your main character. A pleasant mix of familiar characters, a scarf, and a taste for violent hand to hand combat. The second issue of The Victories explores the origin of Faustus and his time training with mentor and previous crime fighter, The Mark.

The overarching premise of the book seems to revolve around a drug called Float. Essentially, you do a few lines of Float and suddenly, you’re afloat. High as balls, but also physically floating. Of course kids, drugs are bad if you’re not careful, and so there are some side effects. Some very nasty side effects that involve becoming a lumpy, bloated, incoherent mess of a human. So stay away from Float, should it ever exist.

Another good reason to stay away from Float seems to be The Victories. You see, they don’t want shit like Float circulating through their city. There’s enough garbage in the can as it is, and the team members are the ones who need to empty it out. Each crime fighter in The Victories has their own unique look and attitude. So far, so fun. Issue 2 introduced them well, and hopefully we’ll learn a lot more about them in the next 3 issues.

It’s always nice to see a writer/artist combination of one person, but it’s refreshing and rare when they do the job properly. Oeming’s artwork is as equally effective as his characters are interesting, providing an always welcome display of top tier creativity. A handful of people I’ve been chatting with on Twitter have been concerned that creator owned comics are oversaturating the market, and that the crap is outweighing the quality. If that’s true (which for the record, it is NOT), it’s safe to say that The Victories fits snugly within the appropriate shelf space housing the good reads.

It’s only two issues in, but The Victories seems like a promising miniseries with tons of potential.