My first reaction to The Backstreet Project Comic Book was that it was just another marketing scheme to get money out of the hands of Generation Y's hard working parents, and big 25-year-old fans like myself. The Backstreet Project Comic is the introductory comic to the highly anticipated animated webisobes of the same name. The project was created by the highly anticipated Stan Media Group. This site is A-W-E-S-O-M-E example of the possibilities that can and will be achieved by various entertainments forms on the net. To make a long story short, someone from Mr. Lee's camp hooked up with someone from the Backstreet camp. And any fan of Backstreet, knows that Nick Carter loves comics, and of course he is a fan of Stan Lee, and ickety ackety ook, the Backstreet Project was born.
My general observation about the comic is that it is a comic book, nothing unlike the thousands printed every day in the United States. The story is a science fiction adventure that has one of the worlds greatest musical groups saving the world before concert time.
The gist of the story is an evil queen wants to take over the Earth, one of her subjects, seeing how happy the people of Earth are while watching a Backstreet concert, decides no way she is not going to let it happen. So she takes some super power charged amulets and gives them to Backstreet, who now all posses amazing super human strength which reflect an interest or personality trait that each posses. For instance Brian has astounding jumping abilities because he likes basketball and AJ becomes a smooth looking bounty hunter type dude that resembles his Johnny No Name Persona.
What I liked about the comic book was the artwork, in my opinion each resembled their Backstreet personas. The actions scenes were ok, and I liked the poster in the middle of the book. It is really cool picture of Backstreet's super personas standing over a wrecked giant robot. I also liked the character interaction amongst the members of Backstreet, a lot of the dialogue was hilarious, and would be how I imagine they would interact with one another. But without a doubt my favorite character was Kevin's because he was hilarious!
Now, what I did not like. First this comic is not worth $10.00, not for 32 pages, even if it is just a one issue special. Then there were the little things in the story that just got to me, like how in one scene Howie was able to project the image of the evil queen who wanted to takeover the Earth, when Backstreet had not even seen the queen yet? And what was the deal with the amulets and the mysterious alien they belonged to?
I just feel for $10 there could have been a little more fleshing out of the story, but perhaps that is being reserved for the webisodes. I do believe, however, this comic will be a good product ploy and bring in a nice short run return- I hope, considering the main people who will be exposed to this comic will be young girls who are not large comic book readers. Who knows maybe this comic will have a positive response and get girls into comics, and get them to check out Stan Lee.net-Hey you never know?
For those looking to go to their local comic book shop or online comic destination to purchase the Backstreet Project comic book as a collector's item, you will not find it. The Backstreet Project comic will only be available either at Backstreet concerts or at their Official Site.
My final plea, not just to Backstreet, but to everyone out their in celebrity universe, is to understand that fans are gullible and will buy anything if they have devotion to you. Please be aware of the products you put out people, especially parents, work hard long hours so that their children can have the best, and if that means buying a ten dollar, thirty-two page comic book, on top of admission to a concert, T-Shirts, popcorn, corn dogs, etc, that is a lot of money. Remember, you work long and very hard, no one disputes that, but you can take months or years off, while the average working civilian cannot. It is not the quantity it is the quality of the product, and if you have too many products with your mug or name on it, people will begin to get sick and tired of you, regardless of how talented you are. And when you do put out a product sure the product represents you and not your sponsoring company, remember only you can save your careers, because over saturating the market will surely put you on the extinction roster.
If you feel my comments were inaccurate and harsh, or if you feel I am one hundred percent correct, and want to praise me drop me a line Bandwidth(at)ybfree.com.