Writer: Jay Faerber Artists: Patrick Gleason Publisher: Image
Plot: Kitchen sink.
Noble Causes is a blipvert come to life. Blipverts introduced on Max Headroom bombarded the unsuspecting victim with so much information their heads reacted as if in Scanners.
As near as I can dope out the plot apparently written while on speed involves a family of super-heroes. One of them is getting hitched. Another is promiscuous and pays the price with an unexpected pregnancy. Another is married to the groom's disfigured brother not appearing in the book. The patriarch's name is Doc.
There's really no time to make connections. The plot bounces like a rubber ball confined to a tessaract. From the wedding, we immediately cut to the reception where somebody whom we didn't know anyway makes a toast and declares himself as a former enemy to the groom. I suppose you could claim him to be the one with the greatest depth, but really none of these characters resonate even as archetypes.
The small talk that you're likely to hear at a real wedding seems to be missing. When I attended my buddy's wedding, the priest and I had a discussion about the implications of the alleged fossils found in Martian meteors. Other people asked what I did, how I met the groom, etc. Connections were made. In Noble Causes, everything seems staged.
After the toast, whoosh, you're transported to the groom's sister or cousin or half-sister getting naked with some slab of meat. Fortunately, a robot whom also we do not know steps out of the wings to chastise the wanted suitor. Just what this crowded book needs, yet another character.
Feeling comfortable in that scene, well, that's too bad because zoooooooooooooooooom, we're back at the wedding. The bride only recognizable by the white dress she wears overhears dialogue likely lifted from The Bold and the Beautiful. A hissy fit erupts, and since we do not know who these characters are nor what motivates their behavior, the scene packs the punch of a Nerf boxing glove.
It's very telling when the hero dies gruesomely at the end, and your reaction can't be registered as an arched eyebrow.
Alleged background information offers support for Noble Causes, but don't be fooled. In order for me to like a character, I must spend more time with them than the time it takes Wile E. Coyote to drop from a cliff. Amanda Conner's artwork cannot even save this story. It's as as busy and cramped as the regular artist's treatment of the story.
I don't care what the high-and-mighty Wizard says. Noble Causes is a shallow nightmare of transparent characterization and sporadic plotting that sports a cast of thousands for which you cannot care.
