What do you think?
Rate this book
The Mantle (Collected Editions) #1
The Mantle: Volume 1
Inheriting unimaginable power rules! Learning you're the 38th person to host that power in the last decade and that there's an equally powerful intergalactic baddie whose sole purpose in life is to kill you? Not so cool.
Collects THE MANTLE #1-5.
Collects THE MANTLE #1-5.
112 pages, Paperback
First published October 14, 2015
About the author
Ed Brisson
703 books101 followersComic book writer.
Credits include: COMEBACK, SHELTERED, THE FIELD (Image Comics), SECRET AVENGERS (Marvel), ROBOCOP, SONS OF ANARCHY, HELLRAISER (BOOM!) and X-FILES/TMNT: CONSPIRACY (IDW). Plus, you know, a bunch of stuff I can’t talk about yet.
Credits include: COMEBACK, SHELTERED, THE FIELD (Image Comics), SECRET AVENGERS (Marvel), ROBOCOP, SONS OF ANARCHY, HELLRAISER (BOOM!) and X-FILES/TMNT: CONSPIRACY (IDW). Plus, you know, a bunch of stuff I can’t talk about yet.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
February 13, 2018
Bullet Review:
The first few issues were pretty mediocre and your standard "superhero team-up". But the last two issues coupled with actual deaths of characters, including a superheroine who fights her nemesis while high is what saved this from being entirely mediocre. This would be a strong 3.5 stars if I could rate it such, just because of how it turned out.
That said, I don't know how this can be more than a one-shot. Where do you take the Mantle from here?
The first few issues were pretty mediocre and your standard "superhero team-up". But the last two issues coupled with actual deaths of characters, including a superheroine who fights her nemesis while high is what saved this from being entirely mediocre. This would be a strong 3.5 stars if I could rate it such, just because of how it turned out.
That said, I don't know how this can be more than a one-shot. Where do you take the Mantle from here?
February 19, 2018
I was let down for this being the 2nd series I read from Ed Brisson.
This is a story about a superpower mantle of sorts that jumps from person to person giving them incredible powers. However, a few years prior there's a creature/monster/alien that comes down and starts killing this Mantle user. So when a new mantle user watches a loved one brutally murdered she decides she has had enough and goes after the big bad.
Good: SOme of the fights are pretty epic and really fucked up. Also the start is a interesting idea.
Bad: The storyline is paper thin. The bad guy's motivation is silly as fuck. Also the dialog sometimes just flatout seems dated, weird, or going online, finding lingo on Urban dictionary, and sliding it in there. Which is odd because I didn't get that style from Sheltered. Oh and is there supposed to be more because I can't see how this series continues.
Overall not very good. I was hoping for a knockout like Sheltered but this came off as okay at best, bad at worst, and honestly I wanted way more. 2 out of 5.
This is a story about a superpower mantle of sorts that jumps from person to person giving them incredible powers. However, a few years prior there's a creature/monster/alien that comes down and starts killing this Mantle user. So when a new mantle user watches a loved one brutally murdered she decides she has had enough and goes after the big bad.
Good: SOme of the fights are pretty epic and really fucked up. Also the start is a interesting idea.
Bad: The storyline is paper thin. The bad guy's motivation is silly as fuck. Also the dialog sometimes just flatout seems dated, weird, or going online, finding lingo on Urban dictionary, and sliding it in there. Which is odd because I didn't get that style from Sheltered. Oh and is there supposed to be more because I can't see how this series continues.
Overall not very good. I was hoping for a knockout like Sheltered but this came off as okay at best, bad at worst, and honestly I wanted way more. 2 out of 5.
January 7, 2022
Intriguing enough.
March 24, 2016
'The Mantle: Volume 1' by Ed Brisson with illustrations by Brian Level is an interesting idea that kind of gets bogged down for me with being a bit too crass.
A hero is chosen to be The Mantle. That hero is hunted down by a villain known as The Plague. The problem is there is only one Plague, and there have been many, many Mantles. The Plague has gotten so good at defeating Mantles that they barely have time to train before they are dispatched which leads to the formation of a team of heroes to try to help the new Mantles adapt and survive. When the latest Mantle is picked, then killed, his girlfriend Jen is the next one to be picked. Barely able to adapt to her grief, she now has to come to terms with probably being defeated by her new enemy in a war she didn't choose to fight.
It seems like a new approach to telling a superhero story, with a reluctant hero and an impossible villain, but we've had new approaches before, and this doesn't seem all that different. It's violent and filled with the kind of crudeness that just makes me feel like all the excess is there to give it all an edge, but it doesn't. And the twists and turns aren't all that clever. The final twist had me shaking my head. I liked the idea, but found it lacking in creativity or execution.
I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Diamond Book Distributors, Image Comics, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.
A hero is chosen to be The Mantle. That hero is hunted down by a villain known as The Plague. The problem is there is only one Plague, and there have been many, many Mantles. The Plague has gotten so good at defeating Mantles that they barely have time to train before they are dispatched which leads to the formation of a team of heroes to try to help the new Mantles adapt and survive. When the latest Mantle is picked, then killed, his girlfriend Jen is the next one to be picked. Barely able to adapt to her grief, she now has to come to terms with probably being defeated by her new enemy in a war she didn't choose to fight.
It seems like a new approach to telling a superhero story, with a reluctant hero and an impossible villain, but we've had new approaches before, and this doesn't seem all that different. It's violent and filled with the kind of crudeness that just makes me feel like all the excess is there to give it all an edge, but it doesn't. And the twists and turns aren't all that clever. The final twist had me shaking my head. I liked the idea, but found it lacking in creativity or execution.
I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Diamond Book Distributors, Image Comics, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.
March 12, 2018
Cool concept. Violent action. Shallow plot. Weak dialog with out-of-place, forced slang. While not terrible, The Mantle is hard to recommend.
October 4, 2015
Ordinary person gets called to superhero duty, has a ragtag bunch with various powers that helps him out, but the evil he has to combat is in another league. Then there's a twist which is rather predictable, a lot of violence happens resulting in a significant body-count, and there's an ending that leaves options for further adventures.
Which I won't subscribe to. All in all there isn't much here that really stood out, other than the slight subversion of a couple of tropes.
Which I won't subscribe to. All in all there isn't much here that really stood out, other than the slight subversion of a couple of tropes.
December 23, 2015
Solid story that I had missed out on when the miniseries originally ran. But I went back to finally read this one in preparation for my interview with Ed Brisson: http://comicsalternative.com/comics-a....
September 20, 2018
Damn, i liked this more than i expected. This was a nice little story with some fun and interesting characters (Especially Necra, loved her) and the humor is so on point and this comic had me laughing consistently, if you love meta humour, you'll love this. This is definitely one of my favorites of the year
June 9, 2022
Honestly, a lot better than I anticipated. Reading the first few panels, I thought this was going to be a slog to get through. However, it quickly picked up and was quite good. Bonus points for the Canadian locations.
November 17, 2015
More reviews (and no fluff) on the blog http://surrealtalvi.wordpress.com/
With The Mantle Volume 1 (collecting comics 1-5), Ed Brisson attempts to subvert superhero conventions and breathe new life into the genre. But the lack of surprises in the 'twists', an excess of gore over story, and a one-dimensional plot make the title conversely trite. There's not a lot of backstory, certainly no character development, and our anti-hero(es) just isn't interesting enough to be likable.Story: In the 1950s, a superhero defeats a strange and powerful villain called The Plague but in a fit of morality, refuses to kill him. In response, the plague promptly kills the superhero and then curses the superhero's power - vowing to follow it through time and murder any person who inherits The Mantle. Cue the modern day where two drug users are tripping under a bridge when one inherits The Mantle. Enter a group of meta-humans who try to help each subsequent Mantle inheritor and ultimate end up failing. Will they do so again with this newest recruit?
Since we have already had the 'highly flawed anti-hero superhero' wave as far back as the 1980s (The Watchmen, anyone?), this perspective really needs an interesting angle. Certainly, superhero drug dependency in the form of alcohol has already been covered (often) in the past so having The Mantle descend on mushroom-tripping NEETS isn't likely to shock. More problematic is that they aren't particularly interesting and drearily kind of pathetic. One could say that is the point of The Mantle but we should either love or hate them for their 'mundacity'. Instead, I found I just didn't care if the Plague got his latest victim or not.
The plot, also, kind of toddled along in its nearsighted impetus. The tension was intended to be caused by whether or not the Plague would find The Mantle - but that can't be sustained through 4 titles of the main characters' denial of newfound powers/their situation and then Plague;s gory murders while tracking them down. If readers love seeing heads split open messily and frequently, this is definitely the title for them, though.
The denouement of the story arc is not unexpected - and really it felt that the author wrote himself into a hole from which we couldn't reasonably hope for any other outcome. As such, when the ending happens, it was almost disappointing to realize there would be no great surprises here.
The art is serviceable and conveys the story fine. There were no surprises there either but certainly I enjoyed the author playing with the various superhero costumes through the different incarnations of The Mantle.
At 140 pages or so, The Mantle is a quick read. It completes the story arc and leaves the door open for more in the future. But honestly, with the initial conceit gone, I'm just not sure if there is anywhere interesting to take the characters.
January 7, 2016
What we have here is a an attempt to break the bounds of conventional superhero stories and bring forth an antihero we can all care about and want to see succeed. Assuming that is in fact the author's intent, he failed. What he has instead brought forth is a book filled with gore, populated almost uniformly by characters whom you either dislike or don't care about and fails utterly to give us a reason to care. There is no character development and precious little backstory upon which to hang any reader emotion. Instead, we get gore.
The plot summary above is a good one and I won't repeat it. There are five main characters in the book. Two supposed heroes upon which the Mantle, and all the superpowers one could ever desire, descends. There are two problems: they are are a drug using, slacker couple, and they know nothing about fighting, much less fighting something as all-consuming as the Plague. There are two meta-humans whose mission in life is to help the human bearer of the Mantle. The final character is the Plague. The Plague is as obviously dislikable as his name implies. His mission in life is to destroy the human in which the Mantle has descended upon the death of the previous holder.
He quickly disposes of the young man upon whom the Mantle first descends only to see it jump to the man's partner, much to her dismay. She takes a more considered approach to battle and rather than run - a tactic which has failed every previous bearer of the Mantle - she figures out a way to beat him. That of course is something which has eluded every previous bearer. Somehow we are to believe that even in the face of no evidence to make that belief even the slightest bit plausible.
I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
The plot summary above is a good one and I won't repeat it. There are five main characters in the book. Two supposed heroes upon which the Mantle, and all the superpowers one could ever desire, descends. There are two problems: they are are a drug using, slacker couple, and they know nothing about fighting, much less fighting something as all-consuming as the Plague. There are two meta-humans whose mission in life is to help the human bearer of the Mantle. The final character is the Plague. The Plague is as obviously dislikable as his name implies. His mission in life is to destroy the human in which the Mantle has descended upon the death of the previous holder.
He quickly disposes of the young man upon whom the Mantle first descends only to see it jump to the man's partner, much to her dismay. She takes a more considered approach to battle and rather than run - a tactic which has failed every previous bearer of the Mantle - she figures out a way to beat him. That of course is something which has eluded every previous bearer. Somehow we are to believe that even in the face of no evidence to make that belief even the slightest bit plausible.
I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
November 25, 2015
The Mantle was a somewhat different comic about super powers. I actually liked the idea - it centres around the power of the Mantle that is passed to different people giving them super powers to fight a super villain named the Plague. Then we have Jen, whose boyfriend becomes the new Mantle only to die, until it's Jen's turn. She and the Mantle's helpers try to survive and beat the villain. In a way the reasoning to the Plague's need to fight the Mantle was refreshing and at the same time it was kind of dumb. The emptiness Jen feels at the end of it is well described as well as the whole situation, since it lacks logic - the best part is that even Jen understands that. The comic is a bit uneventful as it's merely about running and fighting. We don't get to know the characters enough and the helpers' role was very vague. Who were they and why were they helping the Mantle in the first place?
The art is quite nice and not so bulky as in most comics about super powers. Thus this avoids the superhero stamp and is more or so a comic about finding your place in the world and in a situation you didn't ask for. The idea of the Mantle choosing alcoholics and drug users was very interesting, but sadly so its potential was lost. The colours are broody, which I liked a lot and overall art-wise this is quite OK. The lack of depth in the comic is the worst part compared to everything else, since The Mantle does have potential as a profound interpretation of the state of the humanity, but instead it jumps over it in order to reach the entertainment value. Sadly so the comic isn't entertaining enough.
The art is quite nice and not so bulky as in most comics about super powers. Thus this avoids the superhero stamp and is more or so a comic about finding your place in the world and in a situation you didn't ask for. The idea of the Mantle choosing alcoholics and drug users was very interesting, but sadly so its potential was lost. The colours are broody, which I liked a lot and overall art-wise this is quite OK. The lack of depth in the comic is the worst part compared to everything else, since The Mantle does have potential as a profound interpretation of the state of the humanity, but instead it jumps over it in order to reach the entertainment value. Sadly so the comic isn't entertaining enough.
November 17, 2015
Showdown between the Mantle and the Plague
This comic collection deals principally with an age-old battle between two super-powered beings, the Mantle and the Plague. The Plague regularly kills the Mantle whose powers then shift to another person who then has to fight the Plague all over again. With the help of a few other powered beings, the Mantle fights on – and loses.
Here we see how all this ends. The writing and artwork are engaging and this is well worth a visit. Good characterisation but also quite a lot of gore.
This comic collection deals principally with an age-old battle between two super-powered beings, the Mantle and the Plague. The Plague regularly kills the Mantle whose powers then shift to another person who then has to fight the Plague all over again. With the help of a few other powered beings, the Mantle fights on – and loses.
Here we see how all this ends. The writing and artwork are engaging and this is well worth a visit. Good characterisation but also quite a lot of gore.
January 5, 2016
A decent enough look at a reluctant new recipient of superpowers, and the singular battle they're destined to face. The book does try and have its cake and eat it however, which isn't the most clever thing it could do – it certainly leaves you at issue two wondering why the companions are so lame, and why one is saddled with the inept 'power' of going to purgatory to see dead people. If the craft was more evident throughout this could well be a winner – at best it's a droll diversion.
December 26, 2015
A solid super-hero read.
February 21, 2016
A creative and violent start to an interesting series.
Read
May 19, 2019Meh. Good beginning though. Hope he makes more.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews