With interior art by Mark Badger (his second Marvel work after having a one-issue fill-in on Power Pack) and cover by no less than Bernie Wrightson and Jon Muth, there’s no question that The Gargoyle is one of the most beautiful miniseries of the 1980s. Storywise, it’s pretty heavy handed and plodding. But it’s also not terrible.
It starts with a wonderful, 4-page wordless sequence showing Gargoyle breaking into a funeral home and crying at an open casket, only to discover that the woman in the coffin is the wrong body. The book feels disjointed because these wordless sequences recur, but they’re punctuated by over-wordiness. Lots of Punisher-style internal narration (too much of it).
Overall, we get a much more detailed origin story for Gargoyle—all the way back to the woman he was in love with back in World War One, when he was still just a normal man. And really, nobody cares. Gargoyle just isn’t important enough for a four-issue origin.
Like I said, not bad, but not worth writing (or reading) about.
Grade is B on the art, C- on the story.
P.S. I want this toy:
