Damage #7 Review

Damage #7

Storytellers: Robert Venditti, Diogenes Neves, Tom Derenick
Art Team: Trevor Scott, Sean Parsons, Larry Hama, & Tom Derenick
DC Comics
Release Date: July 18, 2018
Cover Price: $2.99

Damage Takes a Dive

I've held out from completely giving up on this title altogether because when I read the first few issues I really saw some potential and interest in this concept and character idea. Despite all my hopes and initial intrigue however this title, since the first three issues, has gone down a path of predictability and has the feel of something being dragged out to the point I no longer care.  So what was my breaking point? Donate a click and find out.



The issue begins with Col. Jonas in Columbia, Missouri making a visit to the local Veterans hospital. Based on situation and dialogue by the end of page one its easy to tell the person she's visiting is someone she has an attachment too. It also fairly obvious that this will end up connecting back to the Damage project somehow.

One of the big problems of this title has become it's mainly been reduced to villain of the month fair at this point. That is a big reason this book is losing my interest fast, its just too predicable for me to enjoy, it's been the same essentially six times now. This issue decides to intercut the Col. Jonas' story with scenes of Damage's latest villain of the month, the 'Goon Squad' Jonas has hired to track Damage down, who acts without her authority while shes bedside the patient she visiting. Again same old shtick only now a bit of background on Jonas instead of Damage struggling for memories.

We do that back and forth and merry-go-round for the rest of the issue, again the twist was obvious from the get go, so the cliffhanger has no impact as the story comes to its conclusion.  As usual Damage shrinks back into Ethan, is whisked off by rescue services, and we're back to square one at the end of this issue with Ethan eventually continuing his march to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.     

Overall, this used to be a book I was buying and not solely reviewing, after issue six, an entire arc, I decided if this was going to go somewhere interesting with issue #7 I'd stay with it until the end of the next arc. With that being said this issue was nothing but more of the same, and much like this book, as Ive already stated in this review several times but you can only say something is repetitive and predicable in so many ways.  This is long form storytelling done wrong because its four to six issues worth of story being dragged out for twelve so DC can collect two trades. Pass on this issue and unless you're extremely invested in Damage pass altogether.

The art is serviceable although since Tony Daniel's left the title it has lost a lot of his 'wow factor' that made Damage appealing, interesting, and menacing.  I just don't get the feel from the art anymore that he's a character who can take on anything, or one, anymore solely from how he appears, I miss that so much I think it distracted me a lot from the think story which showed cracks early.

Bits and Pieces

This issue is definitely my jumping off point for this series. This book is firmly entrenched in its villain of the month battle formula, as the story remains in the background, moving at a snails pace each issue. Worse than just being a beat em up month in and month out, the story beats and twists are telegraphed from page one here, ruining any fun or mystery setup in previous issues.

4.0/10