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View Full Version : Hard Time #1-3


leez34
04-30-2004, 12:09 AM
Picked these up at the comic store the other day for a change of pace. I like most of Gerber's work, and I remember reading about this comic in a mainstream magazine - maybe EW.

Anyway, it's great. It's about a kid, Ethan, who brings a gun to school with his buddy and they take the cafeteria hostage. His buddy kills some people, and he stops him, seemingly semi-involuntarily, with some kind of energy blast through his back. Ethan (15 years old) is tried as an adult and convicted of the murders his friend committed even though his gun was never fired. He's sentenced to fifty years in prison.

Gerber paints a convincing picture of what "life on the inside" would be like for a fifteen year old boy. In a word, short, unless that boy happens to have weird, unpredictable energy powers that no one else knows about. Brian Hurtt does a nice job of portraying a very adult world through the eyes of an adolescent. The characters are intriguing and the storyline is involving.

As a whole, I give these three issues a B+.

Michael Eidson
05-08-2004, 05:02 PM
Ultimately, I did not have enough interest in Hard Time to continue beyond #3, despite being a fan of both Steve Gerber and Brian Hurtt. The prison stuff I've seen elsewhere, done better, and the story had not moved along enough to catch my attention. I am glad that DC is trying new stuff, but FOCUS overall just wasn't for me.