One of the countless problems with superhero comic books is forced blandness when it comes to characters. Superheroes are not smart. Their enemies frequently connive and scheme and... think, but when a superhero thinks, it’s a momentous occasion. Superhero stupidity sometimes makes comic books hard to read, so I was mildly pleased The Fall and Rise of Vandal Savage spends its time with a supervillain instead. He's not a likable character--Vandal Savage is an immortal bad guy who eats people to survive, usually his children--but at least he has the potential to be interesting.
Given the character is supposed to be 37,000 years old, writer Stuart Moore fills the four issue story with flashbacks, some to historically salient occasions (the creation of the wheel) and some to more visual occasions (a pirate ship). Most of the story, in its present action, is spent with Vandal Savage all by himself, impossibly muscular and naked, running around the mountains or in secret laboratories. Some of Fall and Rise does work, which is a significant achievement for Moore, seeing as how dumb it turns out and how bad Paul Gulacy’s art is on the issues throughout. Gulacy’s current work isn’t impressive and on Fall and Rise he seems rushed (the characters’ faces rarely look the same from panel to panel) and some of it is indescribable.
While the story runs through Vandal Savage’s naked adventures in laboratories, there’s some silliness about scenes taking place in rural Oregon and rural Tennessee. Moore keeps his cast so low there’s no point in telling the reader where these scenes are taking place. The attempt to graft reality onto this story--I mean, given Gulacy’s terrible anatomy--along with the pseudo-history, makes Fall and Rise frequently cause one to wince while reading it. I knew the whole thing was falling apart when, in a 1940 flashback, Moore establishes the superhero as a good guy for hiring a black man. Again, there’s some pseudo-history because the superhero is doing WPA work the WPA wasn’t doing in 1940. But, he has to be doing WPA work... because he’s good.
In fact, after the superhero shows up I should have stopped reading Fall and Rise. Savage--and Moore--spend about twenty pages making fun of said superhero, pointing out many of the problems with superheroes in general and the didactic approach to superhero storytelling specifically. But then Moore turns the superhero into a bully and a coward and tries to present it in a heroic light. It’s stupid and poorly written and illustrated, but I was more upset I’d just spent three issues with Vandal Savage as the protagonist and Moore flushed him down the toilet to go with the impossibly bland superhero. Frighteningly, Fall and Rise could have used another issue. It wouldn’t have made it better, just less bad.