Posted in: Comics, Review | Tagged: action, celeste woods, charlie's angels, comedy, Dynamite Entertainment, joe eisma, john layman, spies

Charlie's Angels #1 Review: Made for Fans and No One Else

Charlie's Angels are back, and it's still the 1970's. The three Angels have gone undercover in a club where they are spying on a weapon's deal going down. Jill is a host, Kelly is a waitress, and Sabrina is the performer. Together, they are going to gather evidence and stop the men perpetrating the deal.

I'm a little too young for the original Charlie's Angels television series. I was twenty years from birth when it first came on, and I never had interest in watching the reruns.

I bring this up because you need to have loved Charlie's Angels the show to enjoy this comic. The book is practically unapproachable otherwise.

It's not that it's steeped in next-level Charlie's Angels lore—if there is such a thing. The book is just as corny, wholesome, and unceasingly saccharine as the old show. It's safe, the characters are bland, and the stakes are never that high. This comic's idea of high comedy is having Sabrina pull a monkey out of her magician's hat and it attacking the mob bosses as a distraction.

It kills its own pacing by jumping back to them receiving the mission before going undercover even though the plot is very simple and straightforward, making the explanation only an excuse to reenact a meeting scene from the show.

It even ends on the note of the monkey attacking their handler while everyone else laughs in unison.

Well, that, and a pair of German spies planning to kill then-President Jimmy Carter and seeing the Angels as a genuine threat to that plan.

Joe Eisma's art is good, and it admittedly fits the tone of the comic. It's cartoony but detailed well. Nothing is done to distinguish Kelly and Sabrina which are the two brunette Angels, which does undercut the token feminist gestures the comic makes. Celeste Wood's color art is bright and heavily contrasting, so it does also compliment the visuals.

Charlie's Angels #1 is a nostalgia trap made for those who really miss the old series. I won't say that audience is invalid, but it doesn't accommodate anyone who would be interested in a genuinely fresh and interesting take on the comic like Dynamite's own Nancy Drew #1, which came out a couple of weeks ago. I can't recommend Angels #1, as I genuinely find it unbearable. However, if you were a fan of the original series, you might find something worth enjoying in it.

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