Comic Book Review – Sideways

Sideways: Steppin’ Out (2018)
Reprints Sideways #1-6
Written by Dan DiDio and Justin Jordan
Art by Kenneth Rocafort, Robert Gil, and Carmine di Giandomenico

Sideways: Rifts and Revelations (2019)
Reprints Sideways #7-13, Annual #1
Written by Dan DiDio and Grant Morrison
Art by Kenneth Rocafort, Max Raynor, Trevor Scott, Will Conrad, Cliff Richards, Shane Davis, Michelle Delecki, and Ibraim Roberson

Following the events of DC: Metal, a somewhat ludicrous storyline, DC Comics rolled out a line of comics that clearly attempted to create Marvel knock-offs. That’s nothing new. We’ll see later this month when I review Marvel’s Squadron Supreme that the Big Two have been doing this for decades, a playful series of non-copyright infringing homages that let writers make commentaries on the other company’s characters.

One of the characters created in the post-Metal era was Sideways, who is a version of Spider-Man in appearance and some character bits. His powers, however, are very different; he can create portals and jump from one point to another. As the series continues, he learns how to travel to other worlds in the Multiverse. Sounds good…maybe? It ends up being just okay.

Derek James, a Puerto Rican teenager, was on a trip to Gotham with his mother when the events of Metal occurred. He falls through a dimensional rift of dark matter and emerges seemingly okay. Later, he discovers he can create rifts of his own and jump around to wherever he’d like. His best friend, Ernestine, is the only person he shares this secret with while trying to balance how home & school lives. Because she’s a near-professional cosplayer, she makes his costume, which includes a full face mask to hide his identity. 

After a few weeks of publicly acting as Sideways, Derek is pulled into a pocket universe by Tempus Fuginaut, a cosmic being who wants to train the boy and ensure his powers are used to help repair the damage to the Multiverse. Along the way, several villains debut and develop grudges against this upstart, slowly building his rogues’ gallery. Eventually, Derek starts to interact with the greater DC Universe. He meets Hot Spot, an obscure Teen Titans character. He ends up in another dimension where space & time are mixed up and teams up with the New 52 version of Superman. His most significant story in this latter half is with Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers. The series was canceled on a cliffhanger, though Sideways played a crucial role in Dark Crisis.

The best way to describe Sideways is as a perfectly okay comic. It’s not exceptionally bad, but rather more derivative of things like Spider-Man and other similar teen superheroes. Derek has a tense relationship with his mom, which leads to an “Uncle Ben” moment. Subplots are building up mysteries behind the scenes. There’s even an OsCorp-like corporation that wants to exploit the hero. The problem is that we’ve seen all of this before presented in a much better manner. The familiarity cannot hide that the book never successfully builds momentum. The new villains, while certainly contemporary & modern, just aren’t very interesting in how they are presented.

Creating new characters who aren’t spin-offs of established superheroes is very hard in the comics industry. Everything is about IPs that can be spun off into multimedia ventures, movies & streaming being the main thing. Making characters who are essentially mimics of Marvel characters makes that nearly impossible. You can almost feel the lack of momentum when the story starts. It’s relatively rote while charming. The characters are moderately likable. The stories just feel paper thin to the point of evaporating.

I was very surprised when I read through these because I’d heard some positive things, and Grant Morrison pens an arc. However, I didn’t find those stories to read like Morrison’s work because DC Comics Editor-in-Chief Dan DiDio was the book’s co-writer. If you don’t know much about DiDio, he was someone that DC fans really came to dislike, and I can’t blame them. 

So many of DiDio’s ideas were poorly thought out and executed; the New 52 is probably at the top of that heap. He also seemed to have a tremendous hatred for Dick Grayson/Nightwing and consistently tried to kill him off in various crossover events, but I don’t think his staff went for it. For example, in Infinite Crisis, Nightwing was supposed to die, not Superboy. These Metal spin-offs were a big DiDio venture. A little over a year later, not a single one was still being published. Most characters barely appear outside those books save The Terrifics, which featured already-established heroes.

Kenneth Rocafort’s art in the book is the main highlight. He has such an interesting style, sort of textured and fractal, that provides the energy you would expect from a Spider-Man-inspired comic. The problem is that you need to pair that art with a script that helps show off its strengths. Sometimes, in the case of a villain with super speed, it works. Rocafort also swaps out with several other artists during the series who are definitely not at the same level as him, and it affects the reading.

I don’t think Sideways is an interesting enough concept or character to leave me clamoring for more. The Tempus Fuginaut storyline never feels fully fleshed out, but DiDio clearly loved the character. He brought him back for a series of one-shots about worlds in the Dark Multiverse. Eventually, DiDio got ousted just before he was going to roll out his 5G Initiative, another radical reboot that sounds like it would have been terrible. Can’t win ‘em all.