Generation Shattered was a book that had my attention as soon as it was announced. The idea of a team of heroes coming together from various timelines to battle a threat to reality itself just sounded like a DC version of Exiles, a book I love, so I was sold on the concept straight away; but the I saw the line-up for the team and it became so much more intriguing.
The story begins in the distant future, where Kamandi, the last boy on earth, is fleeing from a wave of 'goneness' that's spreading across the world, erasing everything it touches from existence. Rescues at the last second by an elderly Booster Gold and Skeets, who is now a snazzy gauntlet like device that you can wear, Kamandi is sent back through time with the android to recruit a team of heroes to stop this wave from erasing every period of history.
Over the first half of the book we follow Kamandi and Skeets as they try to recruit an army of heroes, something that proves harder than expected as the nothingness wave keeps erasing times and places, and Kamandi makes a few wrong rescues along the way. However, over the course of his travels Kamandi is able to recover seven others to help him on his mission, Super-boy from his time with the Legion of Super Heroes, Starfire from her early days with the Teen Titans, Steel from the Reign of the Supermen era, Booster Gold from when he first came back in time to become a hero, Doctor Light shortly after she became a hero during the first Crisis, Sinestro when he was still a Green Lantern, and Batman from his very first appearance in 1939.
This probably isn't the kind of team that most people would build if given the free reign to do what this book does, and certainly isn't what I'd come up with, but it definitely makes for a very interesting group of people. We have a Batman who is straight out of the pages of his very first appearnace, who's a fish out of water because he's used to the technology of the 1930's. There's a Sinestro who is still a hero, though probably still battling with his own internal demons and his mistrust of the Gauradians of the Universe and their way of doing things. Starfire is still new to Earth and hasn't yet made those friendships and connections that helped to ground her to life on our planet. Booster is an arrogant dick who's only around to make a name for himself and become famous, and isn't the selfless hero that he will one day become.
This is a team of people who are new to what they do, who are heroes, but are inexperienced and unsure, who haven't grown as people, and whilst this means that they might not be the best group of people to set out to try and save reality itself, it does make for some interesting moments.
Sadly, we don't get much time to slow down and really spend time with the characters, despite the issue being 80 pages long. So much of the bulk of the issue is spent with Kamandi gathering his team, and then once they're together they're quickly beset by the villain. Despite the length of the book it really doesn't feel like an 80 page read because of the pace it moves at, and you'll end up getting through it much faster than you realise. Whilst this is good in some ways, as it makes the story move with a sense of urgency, it does leave it feeling lacking in the character development department; but hopefully this is something that will be given more time in later issues of the story.
The book has three writers working on it, Dan Jurgens, Andy Schmidt, and Robert Venditti, and you don't really get much sense of who wrote what parts of it, probably in part due to the fast pace of the narrative. But the book also has twenty artists working on the book. At first glance this seems pretty extreme, and you'd think that this would make the book feel unruly or hard to follow, especially as some of these artists have very different art styles, but the book uses its artists well. Every time the book moves to a different era to see different heroes the art style changes, both to signify that these are different places, but also to act as a nod to the art styles of the times these eras were set. The art styles suit the places where they are used, and really helps to sell the idea that we're travelling through multiple times and places.
Generation Shattered proves to be something of a love letter to the history of the DC Universe, and takes readers on a breakneck roller coaster ride across the comics of the past, filled with nods to things that readers will love. However, its fast pace does act a bit to its detriment as we're never given a chance to slow down and appreciate what we're reading, or to see the characters do much; but as the start of something it's a hell of a first issue, one that definitely gets you pumped to see what comes next.
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