This is a new collection from DC Comics, reprinting an eight issue series that was placed in the DC Focus line. This line is now defunct, and any titles that are still arriving from it have been folded into the main DC line.
When this line started I remember it being promoted as a genre-less line of slightly fantastic, but non-superhero stories. Then I looked at the comics as they came out and thought, "that sorta looks like superheroes, and definitely looks genre." I didn't bother adding any of the titles to my stacks of comics I bought. Several months later I came across inexpensive copies of the first two issues of Kinetic and read them. They were interesting, but I didn't think to search out the rest. A week ago or so, I saw the collection come out and noticed it had a $9.99 cover price, which struck me as a fair price for the series, and since it collected every issue, complete, I grabbed it.
As indicated above, this is a genre title, and basically a superhero book. It features a story "created by Allen Heinberg and Kelley Puckett," written by Puckett, and illustrated by Warren Pleece, with later issues having inkwork by Garry Leach. Heinberg is much more well known for his TV writing than for comics, though all accounts indicate he is a longtime comic fan. The story is well thought out, and I enjoyed the satisfying conclusion. I don't know whether or not it was always planned to end at issue eight, I assume not, but the wrap up was appropriate, if a little hurried. The book feels as though the entire story and character arc was delineated in the story pitch that the two writers came up with, which gives it the opportunity to come to an appropriate conclusion, even if it was sooner than hoped. In fact the middle few chapters (I treat each 22 pages as a chapter when reading a trade collection of a serial title) seemed to indicate that the series was leaving itself open to an easy pace, almost manga-like in that reading the story went quickly, but that its openness was intended to follow the flow of the story.
The artwork is workmanlike, which I intend as both praise and indictment. I am actually a fan of Pleece, enjoying his work on Deadenders and True Faith. He has an idiosyncratic style suited to stories of regular people in fantastic situations. My impression here is that he uses a slightly simplified style when faced with a monthly deadline, which while certainly understandable, leaves us with the flavor of many other DC titles. DC has always offered steady performance and dependability over Marvel, Image and their ilk, but at the cost of showmanship when it comes to artwork.
The other interesting thing about the images is the color palette. A very specific and possibly too rigid blue-grey-red color scheme is used. The characters are always colored with shades of blue or grey and the rest of the panel is always a shade of red. There is plenty of skill in the coloring, but this choice never clicked with me. It's possible I missed a key storytelling point with the duochromatic coloring, but it was lost on me nonetheless. I don't understand why, if this color scheme was important, it wasn't followed to include the covers.
Overall, this is book was quite enjoyable, and I recommend it to curious readers. It was a very interesting story, especially given that it came whole cloth from the creators, not as a piece of patchwork from the larger DC Universe.
