It took six issues but I finally got the tone of this book. This book feels like a bad, 70s B-action movie. Also in the same vein as good B-movies like The Warriors or even Death Wish. It just has this really over the top, but gritty quality to it. But of course that word ‘quality’ will only be used once (or I guess twice…) because this is the issue that finally got me to drop this series.

Even though it has a B-movie feel to it, there really isn’t anything enjoyable about this issue. Everything is telegraphed from the beginning. You know where the twists are going to happen and how Herc is going to end up saving the day. The villains, like Basilisk and Man Bull, will help save the day and someone being brainwashed by Hecate will go back to the hero’s side in the end. Kyknos is also not much of a threat as he’s just another generic, big muscled villain you see in dozen of comic books. There’s just no love in these pages that I felt when Pak and Van Lente were doing ‘Incredible Hercules’. It’s just going through the motions and then adding a few punches into the mix.

Neil Edwards art is also something left to be desired. Every panel has ‘stiff’ characters in that they just seem to be posturing instead of seeing believable movements. Characters also tend to change faces every other panel with Helene being a perfect example. One minute she looks like a ‘Golden Age’ Lois Lane the next she looks like a Howard Chaykin model. There is no consistancy in the models is what I’m saying. It’s a shame because there are some flashes of brilliance in some of the big splash pages. But you see the obvious mistakes in them that those flashes die pretty quickly.

This is a sad day for me because I love Hercules. Going back into comics Hercules was one of my go to comics to show how great the industry can be. Now it just feels like Pak and Van Lente are writing for a paycheck and not giving us the heart like the did before. This issue sums up this entire new series for me in a nutshell: Boring and Nothing remarkable.