Well, Waid has his big reveal… and it’s utterly predictable, which might have been his point. More importantly, the ending seems to be setting up the next issue to finally reveal what all the characters have to do with one another.

It’s a brief read–Waid has a lot of pointless conversation and it fills pages without actually doing anything–but not a bad one. The evil villain reveals himself and then Waid introduces another evil villain. This evil villain he foreshadowed meeting in a contrived slip of the tongue… even I, as negative as I can be, didn’t imagine Waid would have the Traveler just head over to the guy’s house to say hello. But he does.

Hardin does fine on the art. I wish the pace weren’t so breakneck so Hardin might get a chance to do an establishing shot or two.

Traveler‘s finally picking up a little.

Maybe I’m just overly sensitive to this kind of thing right now, but Waid refers to one of the characters as an “unemployed sales clerk.” Um, if she’s unemployed, she’s not a sales clerk. I guess it sounds better than token black character.

This issue is actually leaps and bounds better than the first, even though it’s real silly in parts. Like when a Norman Osborn lookalike shows up (guess what, he’s the bad guy). And he’s in love with the Traveler’s girlfriend! Shocker!

What’s cool is how Waid’s got everything weaved together. Even if the dialogue’s way too expositional and a little hackneyed, Traveler is compelling anyway.

Once the story is unraveled of course, I can’t imagine there being much dramatic thrust.

Some of the plot contrivances are so obvious, it makes the comic an entertaining read (as in, Waid can’t be asking the reader to take it seriously).

I’m a little confused to Waid’s approach with this series. He has a lengthy opening sequence introducing a completely unimportant character and then he brings in the titular character. The Courier’s Tragedy it ain’t.

Maybe the character will be back because the Traveler did something mysterious to her before she left, but it’s too soon to say. Waid’s got a goofy cliffhanger–it’s more annoying than anything else, making the first issue not make any sense without going and buying the second.

It’s also never clear if there are other superheroes in Traveler. Everyone reacts pretty calmly to the news except the FBI agent who will probably end up being his girlfriend or mother. The Traveler’s identity is secret to everyone, even the reader… so it must be a great big surprise.

The book’s pretty much exactly what I was expecting… a mediocre superhero book without anything unique about it. Shame.