the Mighty Crusaders Special #1 - DC

This was an ok book . . for what it was, but . . I just had a hard time getting in to it. I just found myself not really caring. The positives were . . it had a beautiful cover by Stanley Lau. And the interior art by Javier Pina was really good. But that still wasn't enough to hold my interests. Basically the story centers around the Auctioneer selling a civil-war era safe. Nobody knows what's in it, so . . all the bad-guys want it. There are rumors that it holds some type of government secrets. Anyways, the Web figures out that the sale is going on so he decides to swoop in and take it, rather than let any of the 'bad-guys' get their hands on it . . just in case. Well the government is after it also . . as well as a secret government organization called Epsilon. They send Inferno after the safe, although he's actually working for the government and General Latham. Next in is the Buzzard. But we don't know who he's working for. And when Inferno fails to retrieve the save, he's joined by another Epsilon member, the Comet. Finally the Hangman chases the Buzzard and takes the safe from him. Apparently since his persona originated in the same time period, he knows what's in the safe as well as how to operate it. But even with all the warning, the Hangman decides to open it and show the rest what they're dealing with. That doesn't seem like a very bright move to me. Somehow it's tearing a hole in the fabric of reality. There's giant metallic spiders . . a mystery man, who seems to be made of negative energy, or shadow, or something . . something about an hourglass . . and a doorway. Apparently the doorway is what this thing was created for in the first place. Hangman and Ed Diablo are the ones that originally captured it. Anyways, things are really getting out of control so Gen Latham sends in the Shield. He brings the group together as a unit, and they contain the threats. And then the Gen brings the group together under the auspices of the Crusaders. Also this story was framed around a meeting of the Global Concern. They're a group that also seems to want to get all of this 'stuff'. By the end they're left with retrieving the pieces and parts from the destroyed spider, and . . they seem to have captured the mysterious man. They're calling him the Eraser, for now. Since he was also locked in the box, they think that he knows all of it's secrets. But apparently his time in there has driven him mad. The story was written by Matthew Sturges, Brandon Jerwa, John Rozum and Eric S Trautmann. I assume because they've been the ones responsible for writing all of these character's individual stories. But it all just seemed like a big hodge-podge to me. However, to me the real problem was . . I find myself not really caring about these characters. Yes, in theory, they should all be intriguing and interesting, but . . we don't really know that much about them yet. As a reader, I'm not invested. As I've said, I found myself not really caring. So, while it was an ok story . . I just wish it had better characters.