National Comics: Eternity: Jeff Lemire, Cully Hamner, Derec Donovan, Val Staples, Patrick Brosseau

Kid Eternity makes his New 52 debut in the first one-shot issue of the new National Comics title, which - like DC Universe Presents - will feature different characters from the DCnU. Jeff Lemire takes us through the story of Chris Freeman, who died a year prior to the events of this ish, but came back from the dead with the ability to bring the recently deceased up from the afterlife in order to have them help solve their murders.

Chris - you know, there aren’t enough Chris superheroes in the DCnU - works for the New York City Police Morgue as an ME, performing autopsies to discover COD. Chris is motivated by the recent trauma of his father’s death, his father being a police detective. A tried and true origin story, parent dying, but this one’s unique in that both his father and Chris were killed together in a drive-by shooting. Now that’s interesting. Normally you can’t have a hero story when the hero dies at the beginning.

So Chris goes about helping this guy figure out who killed him, and we’re given other elements that show us there are larger forces at work here, and that Chris is probably upsetting some kind of normal balance to who stays below and who is allowed to come back up with him. Not much more explanation is given, however. And, sadly, I’m not all that familiar with Kid Eternity from the preboot to offer any kind of guess.

That’s the main shortcoming I saw with this ish…it’s a one-shot. A single issue. There’s no continuation, there’s no “part 2.” Everything we see here in this issue is self-contained, and any questions raised or left unanswered at the end are just that: unanswered. It’s a bummer, because I’m interested in the story. Especially after that last page!

Cully Hamner and Derec Donovan handle the art on the issue, but I’m not sure who’s handling what. Is one the penciller and the other inker? Or did they both do both? The reason I wonder is because, somewhere about two-thirds of the way through the ish, I noticed Chris’s face looks different, and his expressions are more animated and stylized instead of Hamner’s art. I think it’s mainly the stuff taking place at the nightclub where I saw the difference.

National Comics: Eternity, the verdict: I’m a bit down that it’s only a one-shot. Maybe DC will decide to use him more, or throw him in on another title. I would definitely like to see his story told more than what we’re given here. I liked the characters Lemire presented us with, the shop owner and the rockstar. The two clashed very well, as did the shop owner and Chris. We’re set up with the mystery of his case at the beginning, but it does become somewhat predictable with how it turns out. Hopefully you won’t feel the same.

(Photo Source: Comic Vine)