Kobalt #6 [1994]
KOBALT was part of the second wave of Milestone titles, coming a year after the line's original launch. Overall it was the weakest of the seven monthly titles that the publisher was putting out at the time. It featured the adventures of an urban vigilante type hero named Kobalt who reluctantly took on a brightly clad young sidekick named Page (both his real last name and his super-hero identity). So pretty much a Batman and Robin thing (with a Robin debut cover parody on #4, even), only with Batman much meaner and Robin much more inept, as you'd expect in the 1990s.The book did have its moments, especially a few of the twists in the early going and a few of the first encounters with some of the other Milestone characters. But it got tired rather quickly after the set-up was done, and it settled into routine. I'm pretty sure it would have been better as a limited series with a single strong main plot to hang everything on than an on-going series. I ended up dropping it after a dozen issues, and it only lasted four more after that. Anyone know if it came to some sort of satisfactory conclusion worth picking up those four issues, or just stopped?
This particular issue features the 22-page story "Fish to Fry", written (as the whole series was) by John Rozum. On the art were Arvell Jones and John Stanisci, the original art team on the book doing their final issue (with some help from Aubrey Bradford), while the cover has incoming (in two issues) regular artist Eric Battle with Prentis Rollins. Page spends the issue held hostage (thanks to his aforementioned ineptness) by an electrical villain named Volt who wants a package that Kobalt has. Kobalt is smart enough to research his enemy and pick up a non-conducting suit that happens to be in police lockup before going to the rescue. Overall not a bad issue, with some nice artwork, but in the context of the series this is one of those places where it started to show its lack of direction.
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