100% Biased review coming up... I love Thor, Norse mythology, and Viking based things. I used to love Deathstroke pre Nu52 reboot. Especially issues with those amazing Mike Zeck covers, so so good. Of course, then I was enticed to tryout Allwinter #1, a Viking Deathstroke? Count me in. Why should you care? See, I as a rule don't read DC comics anymore and looking over Tom Taylor's resume, the few comics I have read or wanted to read by him are slim to none. And even with sooo many Graham Crackers Comics employees raving about Dark Knights of Steel and Taylor himself, I never even cracked open an issue. Well, Tom did not write the main story, Jay Kristoff did! Even better for me, I guess. So last night I read issue #1 and it was great. Viking Vandal Savage hiring Old Man Viking Deathstroke to kill more Viking dudes? With fantastic artwork by Tirso Cons as well. I immediately signed up for the rest of the series. I even thought about getting the original series it was so good. Then. I. Discovered. There was a backup story by Tom Taylor? See I saw his name on the book but not on the credits page, so I assumed, incorrectly, that he did some pitch or something for the Viking part. Nope, Tom Taylor actually writes the backup story which is a prequel to Dark Knights of Steel! Shocker! It’s a twofer Rick! So, I read the backup prequel. It was, in a word, awful. It was a chore to read and not just because there were no Vikings. Not just because the art was not as good, it really wasn’t. No, it was a chore just to read the words coming out of character’s mouths. It was fairly hard to follow and boring as all get out, nope not good at all. And that last page twist/ shocker/ reveal? Yawntastic. I will get the rest of the series in spite of this. I will not be reading any Tom Taylor backups as I wholly do not care at all. It was so lackluster that if I had read the backup first, I would not have read the fantastically well done Deathstroke story and missed out on a great comic.
This would have been a 10 out of 10 without the backup, FYI.