Damage #6 Review

'The Green' Needs Damage Control

Written By: Robert Venditti
Art By: Diogenes Neves, Trevor Scott, Larry Hama, Allen Passalaqua
Release Date: June 20 2018
Cover Price: $2.99

Damage has hit a few bumps in the road lately after starting off pretty strong. Instead of continuing its forward momentum, and focusing on the Ethan/Damage character combo, we keep getting guest stars thrown at the title, which sidetracks most of the progress for our character I'd like to see. Right now Damage's encounter with Poison Ivy, led to a bigger encounter with Grodd, so after back to back villain reveals for our cliffhangers, let's see how things wrap up here.



The start of the issue continues the Damage vs Grodd, and his minions, fight from the last issue. Eventually after some back and forth Grodd is suddenly able to take Damage down through his mind control abilities.  Although I've enjoyed the Damage character enough his power levels so far seem to be a bit all over the board.  At first, he was able to drop the Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman single-handedly. Now suddenly, the last two issues, he's had trouble with Poison Ivy and Grodd both, not sure that all really equal out if you ask me.

Anyway, the story continues when Poison Ivy reveals that she's done being influenced by Grodd, and what we later find out is 'the Green', to the point she helps distract Grodd to Damage's benefit. Damage uses the Ivy assist to then pummel Grodd into submission, before Ethan is able to get Damage to hold back at the last minute, to avoid killing Grodd altogether. There's a strange moment between Ivy and Damage post fight where she puts him into a flower to rest before Ethan is visited by the issues final guest star ... Swamp Thing.

He and Swamp Thing have a wordy but decent enough exchange. Swamp Thing is such a nice guy he's even filling in some of the blanks about why Ivy has acted so strangely lately here and in other titles. The book goes to great length's to tie into current DC Continuity, and I wish other books would take a lesson from this one in that regard, but again a lot of pages are spent on other titles not doing much to help Damage himself out. Before Swamp Thing vanishes back into the Green he asks 'Damage' for a favor, in exchange for a hookup on a ride to his next location, to which Damage kindly obliges.

Overall this issue was a bit of a 50/50 split for me between things I liked and didn't.  The story itself was only really just OK, but it did a great job of tying into all aspects of current DC continuity, I wish other creative teams put that kind of care into all the titles.  With Damage finally headed to his destination (hopefully) of some final answers, maybe we'll get more of a focus on the Ethan/Damage combo and the development I'm hoping for. Just less of a focus on guest stars now would be a great step in the right direction.

The art isn't much to write home about, especially since Tony Daniel left, it seems to be a hodge-podge of artists being thrown at the title lately, and while I enjoyed last issues effort, I'm back to not liking what this issue presented. Grodd as a character doesn't look very good in any panel he's present it would be my major beef with what we are given here. It's all just a much too cartoony style/experience for what we've been given previously in this series and didn't fit the story or tone much at all.

Bits and Pieces:

I'm still hoping Damage can rebound with a better effort next month that makes me really enjoy reading this book again. After the first three issues, I was pretty sold on what I was being given, but the next three issues mirrored what we were given previously too closely, only with a lesser product on art (Grodd has never looked worse), all with a story that's beginning to become too predictable as a whole.  There were some brief moments of enjoyment in this issue but not enough to recommend it as a solid buy.

5.8/10