Black Tiger: Legacy of Fury

    (Beyond Time, 2004)
™ and © 2003 Beyond Time

For the artist of a comic book based on Hong Kong action movies, Rod Pereira doesn’t demonstrate much understanding of martial arts. The fight scenes should be the meat of any action-based comic book, and that’s where Black Tiger really falls short—the camera angles, the fighting styles, even the gunplay seems wrong. Page 8, Panel 2 is a prime example: The protagonist is punching upward at two assailants, but it looks as if he’s resting his fists against their noses. And the sound effects don’t help—they should never be used as a crutch to hide poor choreography.

If the fight scenes can’t redeem this one, the plot had better, and it doesn’t. Overly wordy speech balloons force the uncredited letterer to shrink the font size in many cases, often changing size several times throughout the page. The dialogue is also missing most punctuation, so the script is all but impossible to follow.

The good thing about this one is the Greg Horn cover, and that’s not worth the $2.99.

— Steve Horton
Jump to issue:
  NotesWriterArtist
#1

March, 2004
Cover Price: $2.99
2 copies available from $3.00 		John HerveyRod Pereira
#2

May, 2004
Cover Price: $2.99
1 copy available for $3.00 		John HerveyRod Pereira