What makes a good first issue? I've been reading a lot of them lately and the question has been on my mind. There’s a lot of different ways to take the opening of your story. Recently I've read the openers to The Manhattan Projects, Saga, Prophet (a relaunch and issue 21 technically but I’ve never read any before and don't feel the need to now.) The Secret History of D.B. Cooper, Thief of Thieves, Hell Yeah, Saucer Country... I've been branching out a bit.
I'd say most of them are failures for first issues.
I've only got one criteria for a successful first issue of a comic book. Its got to make me want to buy the second issue. That’s it. And most of them are failures. Out of the books I listed above I'm only going to be sticking with The Manhattan Projects, Saga, and Prophet.
So why don't I want to buy the second issue of the others? Well, it depends. The Secret History of D.B. Cooper was an odd book. Its premise is based in a hijacking from the 70s but it quickly turns into Samurai action with a Teddy Bear sidekick against a monster/Russian government Official. To say it was odd would do the word odd a disservice. But most of the book was tied up in the fight and the conversation between Cooper and the Teddy Bear. At the end there's a bit with some CIA agents but I really didn't feel like there was enough to keep me around other than the Odd. Odd is not enough for me.
Thief of Thieves spent half its issue in a flashback about stealing a car. This is supposed to be about the greatest thief alive and he spends most of his time jacking a sedan. The heist at the beginning was cool but the book ends on him quitting. Reluctant worlds best thief isn't a pitch its a party member in Final Fantasy 6. We're going to have to spend a good bit of the next issue on how to get him to steal shit again. Pass.
Hell Yeah was especially off because for a book called Hell Yeah it was pretty dull. Kid goes to school, kid gets in fights outside of school, kid gets threatened with expulsion, kid goes to see a band, kid goes to bed. Kid goes to school and people from another dimension show up. So until that last one we had an episode of a generic teen drama on ABC Family. And I called him kid because I have no idea what his name was. There was some other bits with the first Superheros to emerge in this world but none of it was anything we hadn't seen before. Don't engage me and I won't pick up number 2.
Saucer Country was the one I'm most disappointed in. Paul Cornell wasn't a name I was familiar with a year ago but now I look forward to his DC Comics work and have really enjoy his credited Doctor Who episodes. The first issue of Saucer Country falls into what I like to think of as the first issue folly. To get us to buy the comic you have to tell us what its about. In this case its about a Divorced Hispanic Woman running for President after being Abducted by Aliens. Your standard Grays. The problem with knowing that going in is that it kills our big reveal on the last page. I was abducted by aliens has ZERO punch when I knew that 3 months ago from the solicits. Otherwise we got some Divorcees feeling lonely and a crazy guy talking to tiny imaged of naked people. Once again, Odd isn't going to get me to buy your comic and neither is lonely.
So what worked? We did have three successes out of seven books.
The Manhattan Projects didn't let me know anything about it from the solicits. All it had was a tag line of “Infinite Oppenheimers” and the knowledge that it was about the secret projects behind the scenes of the development of the Atomic Bomb. So what made this comic work when the others didn't? Well, first we're in a familiar area with scientists that most people have heard of. Even if you don't know Oppenheimer when Einstein shows up you'll know him. But the familiarity is undercut by the intrigue of what they might be doing. The Odd moment in the middle of the book is explained as its happening and is pretty high on the crazy concept scale. But its pretty sweet too. And the last page cliffhanger, which I'm not going to spoil, wasn't something that I knew of months ago nor was it something I saw coming. This book grabbed me with its super science and its crazy potential and made me want to buy issue 2. I'm actually more excited for 2 than I was for 1 and I'd say this was easily the most anticipated book on this list for me. I can't wait to see where it goes.
Saga is a bit of a cheat because I'm fairly certain that Brian K Vaughn regularly sacrifices children to appease his dark lord and gain boons. Possibly in the same Ceremony that the Pixar guys do. He did go all Hollywood on us. What makes Saga work isn't its mash-up of sci fi and fantasy but the strong character work done in a small bit of time. By the end of the first issue you know the protagonists, you know how cheated the Robot Prince feels at having to hunt them, and you know exactly what the bounty hunter is going to do later when he catches them. It might just be an effective use of archetypes and tropes but it works wonderfully. And Fiona Staples art is just beautiful. Especially the giant turtle with laser eyes. Yeah, this one is full of Odd too but its held together by things you care about.
The last one is Prophet. Prophet is a really strange book. Its heavy on narration which it uses to take us through the strange and terrifying world that the Earth has turned into. Its like a travelog of the future after it went to hell. Its got more ideas in one issue than most series pack into a year and it has them all seamlessly tied together to give us a picture of life and what John Prophet is dealing with. There’s nothing to spoil here, no huge final page revelation or twist in the story, just an extremely well done comic that deserves attention. Instead of trying to hook me by the end it hooked me from the first few pages. I really don't feel like I'm doing it justice here.
So what makes a good first issue? Well, it looks like doing something different helps, but don't rely on that like a crutch. Have interesting characters and don't spoil everything in the solicits? Sounds easy doesn't it?
I best the next few I read are going to suck
