Worlds Unite Review Part 13

Worlds Unite Part 9 Infinite Possibilities

Pencils: Tyson Heese

Inks: Jim Amash

Colors: Matt Herms

Letters: Jack Morelli

    I feel like my next few reviews are going to be a bit shorter, though I could find something to say about these issues, I’m sure. The fact of the matter is, a lot of these stories are very “samey.” How much can I gush about the art? How much can I complain about the writing? How much can I speculate about what happened behind the scenes?

    For some reason, Archie thought it would be best to only make 1/4th of the Crossover look great. Immediately, the jump in quality from Edwin Huang and crew is evident. Lost Hex looks like Lost Hex. Sigma looks unique and threatening. Sonic and Break Man look like characters and not weird attempts at copying a style. There are little visual jokes, and characters in the background are all doing something interesting instead of just standing around.

    But now, we get onto the writing. By this point in the story, I was already fed, up, but seeing how the Mavericks were portrayed just ticked me off so much. First of all, the comic established that the Mavericks were personality-less drones that the heroes should have no remorse in destroying, much like how the revived Mavericks at the end of “Maverick Hunter X.” The problem is that, for some reason, the Mavericks start having their personalities again. Ones with quirks have their quirks, like Gemel and his laugh. Some of them quip against the heroes, like Magna Centipede, and even a few mention their occupations or dreams, like Blizzard Buffalo. The story sets things up one way, and then does a complete 180 for this branch of stories. Why?

    This is supposed to be the big SEGA/Capcom crossover. What does that entail? Basically a character from the main cast traveling to different video game worlds, a Maverick does something with a unity engine there, and the heroes of that world break the engine. A few of them are worth mentioning, but not a lot. Out of all of them, it seems that Street Fighter gets the most story focus. I was hoping for a cool fight scene against Magma Dragoon and the Street Fighter crew, but he doesn’t even get to show off any of his moves. Sticks wearing his head, knowing this was a thinking, feeling, sapient being just seems morbid.

    Heck, Street Fighter gets two scenes dedicated to it, where we see M. Bison show up. It feels like they may be setting something up, but they aren’t. M. Bison just shows up later. Whatever. I was hoping he’d pull a fast one and take over Sigma’s operations or something. That would be a neat twist.

    The next one of note is the NiGHTs world. I was wondering if Archie would throw any sort of Easter Egg dedicated to the old miniseries they did. Despite being pretty terrible, I loved those comics as a kid, and the art direction, despite being nuts, was a big inspiration for me in imagining my own characters. You could probably see the favorites on my Deviantart to tell which ones were inspired by them, maybe.