Zeb Larson reviews The Bigger Bang #1…
The Big Bang created all life as we know it. The Bigger Bang creates just one: a being named Cosmos. Is he a destroyer? A hero? A god? All he knows is that he’s completely alone in what was our universe… so he seeks out another where he’ll try to atone for the sins of his mysterious creation. From the inventive minds of D.J. Kirkbride (Amelia Cole, Never Ending) and Vassilis Gogtzilas (Augusta Wind) comes a sprawling space-epic of multi-dimensional proportions.
Written by D.J. Kirkbride and illustrated by Vassilis Gogtzilas, The Bigger Bang (no relation to the Rolling Stones album A Bigger Bang) is a story about a superhero created after a Big Bang-event. Burdened by the knowledge that billions of deaths were part of his death, he decides to become a hero in a different multiverse. At least in this issue, Kirkbride wants to set up this comic as an interesting counterpoint to the Superman mythos.
The issue begins with the hero saving an alien world from destruction, single-handedly blocking the eruption of a volcano. These aliens, not knowing what to make of the hero, refer to him only as a Destroyer. Another group of aliens, led by a creature named King Thulu, are plotting the destruction of the hero. The conflict is relatively easy to see in this comic, and it seems that the biggest enigma will be the hero himself. We only get a few lines of dialogue from him, and while we see the background of his birth, his personality is as yet only a mystery.
On its face, this is sort of a retelling of Superman. The hero’s exact nature is unexplained, but he at least superficially appears to be human. Both he and Superman hail from doomed worlds. His abilities are sufficiently fantastic as to blur the line between man and God. His enemy, King Thulu, lays claim to the authority that the hero is intruding on and resents his presence. Thulu also seems to resent the abilities of the hero, even fearing them, and refers to him as “a mistake.” We have a Superman, a Lex Luthor, and a group of people who don’t know what to make of this god wandering among them.
The art style in this comic is difficult to enjoy. It’s heavily abstracted and very dirty looking, sort of reminiscent of Frank Miller’s style on Dark Knight Returns. The hero certainly fits into that style, with his comically exaggerated muscles and square jaw. Perhaps that’s part of the comic’s Superman reference, but it does make it harder to read. While the grittiness sort of works for the hero, it means that the alien species don’t get the kind of detail that would really flesh them out.
Notwithstanding my feelings on the art, this is a good first issue. Subsequent issues are going to need to explore the hero’s humanity and character now that Kirkbride has established his backstory. A being such as this hero presents an interesting opportunity to explore guilt and loneliness in ways that the Superman comic has never been able to. I’ll be curious to see where Kirkbride goes with this.
Zeb Larson
Originally published November 14, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
