Witch and Wizards: Operation Zero reviewed

You gotta love my mom, she bought a James Patterson book because she looks reading James Patterson books.  Little did she knew that bought a graphic novel.  She doesn't read them and has no interest in reading them, even for her beloved James Patterson.  But she knew that I read them, even if it's like one every five years, but I did read them and she gave it to me.  I figured I might as well give it a chance and see what my mom sees...well, my mom watches those crappy movies on SyFy so I should have known better.  Anyways on to Witch and Wizard: Operation Zero.

It's the future and the world has fallen over a New World Order.  No, not the one lead by Hulk Hogan...or Jeff Jarrett....or Bret Hart but by The One Who is the One!  Creativity is banned, books are burned and magic apparently exists so it can be banned.  There's a resistance led by the Allgood siblings, Whit and Wisty, to take back what's theirs.  In this story, The One who Bans Books has turned against the New World Order and has knowledge of a book that takes away somebody's magic powers....like The One Who is the One has!

First off, it's a sequel to something since there's a 2 on the spine.  I figured that since Patterson seems to crap out books every minute of every hour of every day.  However, while prior knowledge would have been nice, it's not actually required to understand what's going on in Operation Zero so that's got that going for it....which is nice.  The story itself...isn't all that good.  It's thin, it's moronic and at times ridiculous but not in the good, fun way.  Of course most of my other complaints is in regards to the lack of world-building or good backstory but this is a sequel so that can be forgiven.

There is one thing that this book did right and that it's paced extremely well.  I finished it in less than an hour....on the toilet!  While the story may be thin, as in little development or backstory, it also doesn't have much time for fluff either.  It's very economical with its story and every page either attempts to pack a punch or advance the story, it doesn't always succeed but it does try.

The artwork here is decent.  The art is bright and colorful.  The people actually look like people without doing any impossible Rob Liefeld-ian poses, even though the woman are scantily clad for some reason.  The backgrounds are a little sparse and there are a couple times where the comic is laid out in a manner where trying to figure out what panel to read next is next-to-impossible.  One page had it where it was to be read top-to-bottom, left-to-right....comics should rarely work that way and only then if there's a reason and it's clear which way to read.

It's more of summer blockbuster movie.  It's there, it's somewhat entertaining and I think there were some explosions.  It's a quick read and while it doesn't do much with what it has, it does do it in a fairly competent manner.  You won't suffer that much with this.

6/10