Hey and Welcome to the next Lesson.
PAYBACKS
-by Donny Cates, Eliot Rahal, Geoff Shaw & Lauren Affe
Again, I owe a minor thank you to Professor Thorgi [#notsponsored] on YouTube for recommending this title. [Yes, that video IS years old, why do you ask?]
Okay, so I’m late to the party, I’ll be the first to admit, but, I’ve come to find that things that are cool in the moment age to be classics or forgotten and it’s no brainer with Cates behind the pen PAYBACKS easily falls in the former category.
Countless comics and sources of media make ragtag teams. Whether meant to be parodies, paragons of justice, unlikely to succeed or all of the above, there is no shortage of them. PAYBACKS…don’t fit any category that I can tell.
SWEET!
As of recent, Donny Cates has been KILLING IT at Marvel with Venom and Thor so this earlier title is something of a gem to see that his writing is just as sharp.
Basically, if you owe money, that’s where the PAYBACKS come in.
From clever flips on puns to the wittiest of banter to even the BEST of references [“Blade line”] there isn’t a moment of boredom when flipping through the pages.
The main champion of this would be Night Knight and his trusty steed Knight Mare who are summoned by the Knight Light. Like, I don’t know if Donny Cates is into rap, but that alone is worth a DON DEMARCO. Clearly a play on Batman and not a part of it is subtle.
ALL the better.
What’s most striking is Rahal’s art reminds me of Greg Capullo’s art of Scott Snyder’s Batman run in New 52. It’s striking but original enough to stand out on his own and I became an instant fan because of it.
So, I read on and then I come across this page. We see Driver get out of his van and go to his trunk and we see, apparently, THE DOOR TO EL DORADO!
And all he has to say is:
As far as intros [first issue] go, PAYBACK goes and refuses to slow down. It’s not the most action packed, but it leaves enough intrigue from its writing to leave you wanting more. The team is great, the wit is on 11, and this team, while BEAMING with personality, isn’t anything special. No save the world, no do a mission and get your prison sentence shortened. They’re just debt collectors.
And there, students, is today’s lesson.
[LESSON]
Life can be…stressful nowadays to say the least. Many of us are laid off because of the virus and, personally speaking, it can be pretty depressing. If we’re not careful, negative, harmful thoughts can lead you down a dark road.
In my own experience, there’s a feeling of not being good enough for not having employment.
Pride gets in the way and I start thinking I’m either too good for simple employment or too embarrassed to try.
The thing is, thanks to Cates, not even SUPERHEROES are above minimal work.
We see Spider-Man, Superman and Flash have alter egos with day jobs that AREN’T billionaires who are well off and we think, yeah, it’s secondary to who they are because, well, they’re SUPERHEROES.
Their jobs may suck because they already have amazing lives with even cooler powers.
PAYBACKS puts our protagonists in the shoes of regular people to show that, yeah, being a superhero is SUPER normal and not everyone with powers seeks limelight and heroics.
My Hero Academia kind of touches on this as well, but PAYBACKS really drives it home.
So, in the end, I guess it’s okay to be just okay, nothing spectacular nothing grand, just okay.
Even if only for a moment, working a job that isn’t exactly where you want to be does not mean that it isn’t right for you [at least right now].
Take time for yourself.
Grow.
Learn a new trade.
Take a job you didn’t see yourself taking and, when the time is right, look life in the eyes, give it a middle finger and give it PAYBACK!
[PLEASE SUPPORT]
Comics here: https://bit.ly/3dHiv7z , https://bit.ly/2yrLkok , https://bit.ly/3bMTgz0 , https://bit.ly/2WZDTyU
Official twitter: @Doncates , @EliotRahal , @GeoffShaw12 , @laurenaffe , @DarkHorseComics
Instagram: @dcates , @eliotrahal , @geshaw , @lauren_affe , @darkhorsecomics
Well, that’s all for now. So, until comics get back to normal or Tobey Maguire cameos in the MCU, I’ll see you for the next lesson.
Until then, class dismissed!
R.J.'s FAQs of LIFE 