Red Tornado #1

I'm surprised how entertaining I found this comic. Let me be honest, I have little to no interest in Red Tornado, he's always been too generic a character for me. He doesn't really have much of a personality and it seems that most folks fall into one of the two high-collar outstider camps for the JLA; either you like the Martian Manhunter or you dig Red Tornado, and baby, I'm a J'onn J'onnz guy. But now I'm willing to concede there may be a point in Red Tornado too.

Kevin Van Hook's limited is focusing on the relationship between a group of "sibling" robots that include Red Tornado. While Red Tornado is the most famous, it seems T.O. Morrow actually built a water-based 'bot first; Red Torpedo. She turned on Morrow and forced him to deactivate her, but in her current state she's still sent out a call for help to the other elemental robots. I really enjoyed Van Hook's description of her voice as hot sounding. If you're building a robot, why not make her have a nice voice?

The other big 'bot we see here is Red Volcano, a bully who gets off on killing guards as he makes his way to T.O. Morrow's prison cell in Belle Reve. I'm not sure that's where he's supposed to be after 52, but I'm confused on the current status of much of the DCU these days. In any case, Morrow informs Volcano of Inferno, another elemental bot who is living in secret and may not even know he's a robot. The series has some neat ideas and we're certainly lucky there are so many elemental-related words that end with "o."

Jose Luis (didn't he used to have "Ryp" in his name?) does a decent job with the art. He's got the same style as Ed Benes so this issue looks like it was ripped from the pages of JLA. I'm not the biggest fan of this art style, but at least it is consistent for the modern interpretation of Red Tornado.

Fair