[DreamSword]

I recently finished reading the three current volumes of Radiant Black, and it's... alright.

Something that everyone who's interested in reading it should be aware of is that this is not a Tokusatsu in comic form. It is an American superhero comic with a Tokusatsu aesthetic.

If I were to give a comparison as to what the story is like, I'd say it's more akin to, say, Spider-Man and Green Lantern than it is, say, Power Rangers or Kamen Rider. Whether or not that's a good thing is of course up to you, I'm just saying to not expect the Mighty Morphin' comics with this.

That said though, I personally was willing to roll with that, but what I wasn't so keen on was a bunch of other issues that I feel the story has: Primarily its pacing and obsession with plot twists. I'm not exaggerating when I say almost every issue, especially for the first two volumes, ends with the sort of twist that M. Night would love. It got all kinds of monotonous for me.

The biggest twist I'd argue comes at the end of the fourth issue. And while I won't spoil what it is, it's the sort of thing that I could easily see making or breaking many readers. Heck, I would've probably dropped the books myself had they not been given to me as a gift. Now granted, a few issues down the line there's a decent amount of exploration as to what comes of that twist, but whether or not it'll be overall worth it remains to be seen in my eyes.

This directly ties into the pacing of the comic as a whole. To give another Toku comparison, if you totally jived with the pacing of Kamen Rider Build, then Radiant Black should be right up your alley. Just like Build, Black focuses on doing big dramatic pushes right out the gate while not bothering to offer much in terms of build up or character development. Many events happen and are presented as if the comic has been running for twice the amount of issues that it has been at any given point and it really doesn't do any favors in terms of drawing me in.

Which is another thing: Don't expect much in the way of character development for anyone outside the leads. The rogue's' gallery especially are incredibly under cooked to the point that I barely remember who they are the very few times that they actually pop up. Where it gets ridiculous to me is in the third volume, where Radiant Black's' enemies come together to form their own version of the Sinister Six, and I still barely know who they are but the comic presents it as this big thing in terms of all the characters at play, with one of them even giving Black a morality play despite not really having much leg to stand on. It overall feels really shallow, is what I'm saying.

But, it's not all negatives. The thing that I universally love about the comic as a whole is it artwork and general aesthetic. Issue 10 is a big highlight; Being essentially a glorified art gallery in the way that the entire story is drawn and I was all in on it because the artwork overall was just that pretty to look at. This in turn also helps with the action scenes, which are stylistically done and really sells how cool the superpowers in this story are. It's like if someone made a comic version of Into the Spider-Verse, which is a funny roundabout, really.

But yeah, in terms of "Toku comics," Inferno Girl Red was much more my speed, and based on what little glimpses of them I saw in RB, I think I might like Rogue Sun and Radiant Yellow alot more too. But those stories are for another day.