Dan DiDio's Diabolical Dialogue

I really wanted to enjoy last week's Phantom Stranger #0 a lot more than I did - I like the character but this new iteration has stripped the mystery of his identity away and has given him a finite number of tasks to complete. Saying that, though, it's taken him two thousand years to do the first one (the creation of the Spectre) so we should be okay for the next few years.

But the main reason I didn't enjoy it was mostly the clunky, leaden dialogue:

Really? "An uncontrollable rage"? Even "I've been angry all my life" would be better; it sounds more natural, at least to my ears. And later, once the Spectre has been created, we're treated to this:

Right . . . Spectre . . . Wrath . . . I see what you did there, Dan . . . real subtle.

I can forgive one use of the "I am . . . just a stranger" line as a sort of nod back to the old days when the guy used to say it on an almost weekly basis, but to squeeze a second one in at the end of the issue seemed to just underline how old fashioned it sounds.

I'll be sticking with this series for a while but I've a feeling I may be using this post title again.