REVIEW: ‘Generations Shattered,’ Issue #1

Generations Shattered #1 is published by DC Comics, written by Dan Jurgens, Andy Schmidt and Robert Venditti, art by Ivan Reiss, Joe Prado, Scott Hanna, Fernando Pasarin, Oclair Albert, Aaron Lopresti, Matt Ryan, Emanuela Lupacchino, Wade von Grawbadger, Bernard Chang, Yanick Paquette, Kevin Nowlan, Dan Jurgens, Klaus Janson, Paul Pelletier, Sandra Hope, John Romita Jr., Danny Miki, Doug Braithwaite, Rags Morales and Mike Perkins, colors by Hi-Fi and letters by Tom Napolitano.

All of time and space is shattering as some all-devouring “goneness” consumes all that will ever be. Now, an aged Booster Gold seeks to find those who may help him stop what is destroying every reality. But not every mission goes as planned, and this one is already sliding off the rails.

Generations Shattered #1 wastes no time throwing readers into this time-hopping story of omniversal extinction. It does little to explain what is transpiring within its pages, leaving the reader to feel entirely sympathetic with its main characters, who by and large are equally clueless. As the heroes set out to assemble a team to stop all realities from crumbling, they quickly begin bouncing between all manner of time and space within the DC continuity. From 1930’s Earth to distant Rann, the heroes that are gathered are varied and eclectic.

But even as they struggle to grasp the immensity of what they are tasked with stopping, a mysterious figure moves in the shadows, preparing to quash any resistance to their plan.

Generations Shattered #1 commits the bulk of it’s 70+ pages to its heroic team assembling. By the time the full roster has been gathered, the experience of seeing these various heroes surprised and then join the crusade got a bit tired. While a few standouts take the sudden appearance of individuals looking to bring them to an unknown place to stop an unknown calamity uniquely, the general surprise and confusion of most of these encounters get old fairly quickly. And many of the heroes echo the readers’ frustrations with not knowing what is happening.

Once assembled, the team proves to be as dysfunctional as one would expect. Many of the characters do not know each other, pulled from various times and places, quickly setting several of them at loggerheads. These difficulties must quickly be set aside as the villain’s minions soon appear to stop the heroes before they can get their feet under them.

As Generations Shattered #1’s story bounces between places and times, the art changes along with it. This serves the story well by giving each locale a fairly unique feel. Happily, none of the artists tasked with this issue’s myriad of styles ever falls so far away from the others as to feel jarring or out of place. This is also true for coloring throughout the book. It also delivers a large enough variety of palettes to feel like one is constantly in a new place or time, without ever feeling like it does not belong.

The one constant throughout this book is the lettering. As the lettering never goes too far from the industry standards, it allows the reader to have something familiar to grip onto. If the letter work also bounced between radical styles for the various characters and time periods, I feel like it would quickly become a bit too much.

When all is said and done, I feel like Generations Shattered #1 possesses a decent story but often loses track of it amidst all the time-hopping. Now that the team is assembled, maybe it’s follow up stories will be able to set the ship aright.

Generations Shattered #1 is available now wherever comics are sold.