Naomi #6 Review

Don't Get Me Started!

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis and David Walker
Artist: Jamal Campbell and Wes Abbott
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: July 10, 2019

I have liked Naomi since the beginning of this series.  Yes, I am just talking about the character here and even with the snail's pace of character reveals, there has always been something about her that is very likable.  With this first "season" coming to a close, however, I need more.  Do we get it here?  Let's find out...



The issue opens with Dee getting the alert and heading to see Naomi's parents and her best friend, Annabelle.  After a page of back and forth dialogue that clogs the page and really gets us nowhere, we get a "better view" recap of what happened at the end of the last issue before finally getting to Naomi.  Seven pages of back and forth that mostly gets us nowhere storywise!  I guess if you have been reading from the start, you are way used to this by now!

We finally get to Naomi on her birth world, you know, hanging with the guy who killed her parents and plunged the entire planet into chaos.  While at first, it doesn't seem that Naomi knows this, it's all pretty obvious...except Bendis and Walker seem to want to pull a twist out of it all.  Zumbado tells Naomi he was friends of her parents and even hints at possibly setting her up with a yoga class down the line.  He then tells her to "unleash hell" in a superhero form of Primal Scream Therapy that may not have inspired her to go record an album with the Plastic Ono Band, but somehow gives her the insight that Zumbado is indeed the villain of this story.

The two battle a bit and while Jamal Campbell's art has been the highlight of the series for me, it all gets a bit too confusing and convoluted here to call it a well-coreographed fight scene.  Luckily for Naomi, a blast from her past shows up to save the day...or at least lets her live another one.

After a pretty satisfying punch, Naomi is back with her parents and friends and instead of explanations and wrapping up loose ends, we get promises of training, excited chatter and a "show us what you can do" line that leads into the "Story continues in the pages of DC Comics...and in Naomi 2".  Continues?????  Continues?????  I'm still waiting for it to actually start!!!!

I still like the character of Naomi, but I feel like I hardly know her.  By issue three I resigned myself to reading a 6 issue origin story, but now I realize I was asking way too much.  Bendis and Walker have not given us much and what we have gotten seemed to be a calculated move to push this book into collectible status at the expense of storytelling and that is unforgivable.  I still like the art as a whole, but there is nothing here that can't (and probably will) be summed up in a page or two when Naomi shows up in Young Justice (Bendis said in issue #10) and/or when Naomi 2 kicks off.  I think that Brian Michael Bendis should think hard the next time he promises something is Universe Changing because you don't get to fudge that more than a couple of times.  By the way, I usually don't talk about covers, but showing Naomi with the Young Justice team is just one more example of what this book really was about.

Bits and Pieces:

While I like the character of Naomi, this mini-series seemed more intent on being collectible than actually telling a story.  After being pushed as a series that just might change the DC Universe as we know it, I had high expectations and I'm sad to say, this book did not meet them.  I guess that can happen later, but stringing readers along for six issues just to get started telling a story does not get me excited for the future.

4.0/10