After a five-year hiatus, the “Ben 10” franchise makes a comeback into pop culture again in the form of comics. Written by the team that worked on the original show, “Man of Action,” the comic brings Ben back to his roots and explores a grittier world of cosmic horror.
“Ben 10” first aired on Cartoon Network in January 2006, running for four seasons and coming to an end in 2008. The franchise continued with the subsequent series subtitled “Alien Force” and would later be rebooted to a more colorful and cheerful style in the likes of “Ben 10 Omniverse.”
After “Ben 10 Omniverse” ended with mixed criticism from fans, the franchise decided to back up the timeline, releasing a complete reboot of the original show, also titled “Ben 10.”
Fans were still not pleased with this new take on the character, with the reboot receiving the lowest score out of each show, amassing a whopping 2.8 stars on IMDB. The reboot ended in 2021 with no sign of a new show moving forward.
Originally, the idea for “Ben 10” was based on an early comic run titled “Dial H for Hero,” with the main character possessing a magical rotary phone that would turn the user into 10 distinct heroes, each with different powersets and designs. The idea was pitched to DC (Detective Comics) by Marv Wolfman and Carmine Infantino.
“Man of Action” would pitch an idea similar to this to Cartoon Network. After two years of development, the team switched gears from heroes to aliens.
Hope is not all lost for us fans, however, as the most recent piece of Ben 10 media has been released in the form of a paperback comic. Published by Dynamite Entertainment, the comic run is titled “Ben 10,” and is set for four issues so far.
The “Man of Action” team working on the comic run consists of Joe Casey, Joe Kelly, Duncan Rouleau and Steven T. Seagle. The first issue was primarily led by Casey, with modern and almost grotesque illustrations done by Robert Carey.
Issue One was released on May 6, with the other issues projected to be released through the summer. There has been no announcement made yet on how many issues the full series will last.
The comic starts with Ben at the iconic campsite that started it all. Traveling on a road trip through the states with his Grandpa Max and his cousin Gwen, Ben encounters an alien device called the Omnitrix that crashes down from the sky and attaches itself to his wrist, granting him the ability to morph into various alien life forms.
The art style done by Carey has been somewhat divisive amongst fans online. Each alien featured in the franchise has a distinct look to them, which I believe carries on in the comic, though the illustrations of the aliens lean heavily into the cosmic horror aspect. The new designs have strange proportions, and each has detailed, illustrated transformations.
The attention to detail in the comic is prevalent, with intricate backgrounds, vibrant color and surrounding each alien’s speech bubbles is their primary color.
Fans online have pointed out the pacing of the comic feeling a little off, with only 20 pages in the first issue, pacing can make or break a story. A YouTube creator known as Kuro the Artist, of the “Ink Tank,” recently uploaded a video reviewing the comic.
“It [the comic] also seems to keep Ben as an alien for a much shorter period of time than what we’d expect. As with comics, the pacing has to be much quicker in order to fit as much story as you can within a reasonable monthly release. In general, comics are just paced faster than animation. It’s up to you to interpret the slowness of the story beats and pacing of the character’s dialogue. But on the surface, it really does seem like Ben turned back to human pretty quickly,” Kuro said.
The main villain of the comic run seems to be Ben’s primary antagonist from the original series, an alien conqueror named Vilgax. Though the first time Ben transforms, he ends up in a fight against a cybernetic bear, which has little to no connection to the original series, the closest counterpart being Cybearg, a small side character from the reboot series.
There are always pros and cons when it comes to translating media into comics, but I believe that with the original team behind the scenes, the franchise is in good hands.
