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The other day while I was at the shop I happened to pick up Silent War. Well: the third issue, with Crystal on the cover looking powerful with that twit of an ex-husband grasping listlessly at her leg. And I looked inside and said, "Shit, Frazer Irving art," and I saw he'd drawn Black Bolt, and I'm a sucker for the Inhumans so I grabbed the other two comics.
First of all: beautiful book. Occasionally, I find Irving's figures a little awkward -- this usually has to do with the characters in question not quite fitting his style and there being a tension going on underneath, but, for the most part it's beautiful. I'm especially taken with his renditions of Black Bolt and Medusa. The Inhumans are evoked and depicted almost as a contrast to witch-folk of Limbo-Towne, and I think I like when Irving's drawing images of exclusive super-species who live away from mankind.
Continuity miasma - it takes us a while to clearly establish that Attilan is on the moon; while this is no big deal for the seasoned nerd with a wikibrain, in terms of structure and clarity of information for a newer reader, it could have been made more explicit earlier. I actually forgot they were on the moon for a while.
And, damn! Hine manages to write the Sentry so I don't want to knock myself out with chloroform when he shows up.
I'm not sure how I feel about the terrorism angle being applied to the Inhumans. I seem to recall there was a tension to the Inhumans series that Jae Lee pencilled, much the same way - incursion a possibility. I think it's more a reaction to terrorism in general showing up in comics - it seems very forced, imposed from on high, and doesn't always seem natural to the text. Black Bolt's actions are a bit dubious but he's clearly being manipulated, and at least we're not kept too heavily in suspense over the fact - we know something's wrong, even if we can't put our fingers on what, exactly. Beyond Maximus.
I'm beginning to wonder if Luna Maximoff grows up to go back in time under the alias "Layla Miller." Layla hates Pietro and coaches in it terms that might apply to an angry daughter. Hine manages to get Crystal's voice to sound quite natural as narrator even with the goofiness of the time travel stemming from Pietro's new powers.
And Pietro, well, he's creepy.
I wanted to call bullshit on Luna's abilities and her training session with Karnak, it seemed so explicitly cribbed from Cassandra Cain, or River Tam syndrome, and I'm hoping they develop her character a bit more independently. I'd love if the story ended with her taking off into the streets of Earth to end up with a certain gang of Runaways...
Has anyone else picked this mini up so far? It's shaky, certainly, in terms of characterization, although not on the level of Civil War; there's more of a clear sense that something outside the depicted events so far has been influencing things, and this sensation mashes up against the awkwardness of using terrorism as a concept so forcibly, but it's certainly clicking with my head at the moment. |
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