Some thoughts about The Unexpected #1

Who or what are The Unexpected?

Janet Fals has survived several attacks to this planet during her whole life but now there's one that not even her new powers might help her.

This particular spinoff took a while. I have a strange relationship with Steve Orlando, I loved and I mean LOVED his first Midnighter run but after that his works ended-up being more underwhelming with each new title (Justice League of America being at the bottom). Still, I was willing to give this book a chance since I was expecting that the more supernatural direction of the series would revive some of Orlando's style.

Sadly, that's not the case.

Let's start with the positives first. Orlando depicts the main character in a way that is pretty relatable, one that is not really that explored in DC Comics, the average person who suffers from the many constant events that threaten her world and ends-up paying a high price in the last one which is a pretty interesting concept in and of itself and I wish it would have been given more time to see some of that development. The rest of the ideas seem interesting enough as well and manage to exploit the mythical angle of the book decently.

The problem for me is the presentation. This story is introduced as a typical superhero book with big action that doesn't complement the concepts that it involves as well as it could. Interestingly enough, this was a similar problem that Justice League of America had, the plot takes way too much time in fight segments instead of spending time on the characters and showing why we should care about them, I mean, we learnt a bit about Janet but almost nothing about the rest and even what we learnt about her was presented rather awkwardly.

I feel like this book could have benefited from a slower pace where the ideas and cast were introduced in a more intriguing manner. Alas, that's not the case and the issue focuses on things that could have waited later on.

Ryan Sook handles the art and while his style is good looking, the script doesn't exploit his storytelling that well and it seems pretty chaotic at times.

Should have been better, don't know how is going to improve.