I don't normally do negative reviews, but i had high hopes for this one. My problems with this one are philosophical, really. The skill and craft of the people involved are not in question. They're good.

Aqua Leung
volume one
by Mark Smith and Paul Maybury
published by Image Comics


For this one i've got mixed feelings. It's an imaginative world. I read it straight through without setting it down once, so it drew me in. There are definitely some cool moments. I like the one arrow in the middle of a white page to signify the start of one huge battle. The art--brushwork and colors--are quite good.

What i didn't like was the sense of destiny. I really don't like destiny. It's very unheroic. Aqua, the titular character here, doesn't make any decisions. He's essentially kidnapped and taken to Atlantis, then trained against his will to fulfill a prophecy he knows nothing about. At some point he gives in and goes along with it. He never chooses anything for himself. What's his motivation? Why should i root for this guy?

The narrative is told to us by the Millennium Turtle. But first he needs to introduce himself, and tell us that he knows everything that ever has happened and everything that ever will happen, and nothing can change what will happen. So the dramatic tension is cut out from under us before the story even gets started. Everything is going to work out the way it's supposed to, b/c it has to happen that way. Again, that is entirely unheroic. What's heroic about being a cog in some cosmic machine? If that's how this universe works, then tell me about who/whatever wrote Fate, because they're the only real person in the story.

Apparently Aqua is going to get a series of mentors to help him prepare for each of his successive conquests. So he won't even be learning his own lessons, he'll have them handed to him. Now he's even less heroic.

And we aren't even told why it's a good thing that Aqua will conquer and "unite" all the kingdoms of the sea (that's the prophecy). Are they all ruled by bad guys, but he's gonna be a good guy? We might assume this, but he's told that his growing power will corrupt him (and since we know we're in a deterministic universe here, there's no reason not to believe it). So he'll be a corrupt ruler of all he surveys. Why should i root for that?

One last peeve. Aqua, though scion of Atlantis, is sent, Moses-style, to live in another land (ours), and raised by a kindly couple named Leung. They get killed early on and forgotten about. Later, Aqua kneels at the tomb of his Atlantean father, and says how much he misses him and wishes he had been able to know him. You see, that's his "real" dad, not the guy who raised him. That's malarkey. The one who raises you is your real parent. The other one is just a genetic contributor. Oh wait, this is all about destiny, so i guess that includes genetic destiny. So love and caring aren't important, it's all in the legacy. Gotcha. (We don't see his genetic mom's tomb, so i guess the moms don't matter when you're a predestined conqueror.)

Dynamo 5 #9

Jay Faerber (writer), Mahmud Asrar (pencils & inks), Ron Riley (colors), Charles Pritchett (letters)
Published by Image Comics

What's It About? There was this alpha-type hero called Captain Dynamo. He had pretty much Martian Manhunter's power set: telepathy, flight, super strength and endurance, eye beams, and shape-changing. Captain Dynamo was married to Maddie Warner, an agent of government force that dealt with superhumans. Captain Dynamo slept around. A lot. After he died, Maddie found five of his offspring, exposed them to the same radiation that gave Captain Dynamo his powers, and voile: each sibling manifested one of the five powers. Thus was the superteam Dynamo 5 born.

Scatterbrain, the high-school football player, inherited the power of telepathy.
Slingshot, the high achiever, can fly.
Scrap, the dour gothy one, got super strength and toughness.
Visionary, the smart, shy guy gained the eye-beam powers.
Myriad, the playa, can mimic anyone.

In this issue, Scatterbrain is in a coma, due to straining his telepathic powers to the max in a recent battle. In order to maintain his cover, Myriad pretends to be him at home. Scrap and Slingshot investigate a pair of supervillains who have skulked into town.

Scatterbrain believes he's awoken from his coma, but it turns out that he's actually in something akin to astral from: he can perceive the waking world, but can't interact with it. He “travels” to his high school, where he discovers that Myriad's, ah, girl-crazy tendencies are going to make his life more complicated if he ever wakes up.

Then, one of the two new villains (the one with mental powers, called Brains) appears and attacks him! The telepathic smackdown is on!

Meanwhile, Scrap and Slingshot find the other villain, Brawn, who's laying low at a motel. When he apparently kidnaps a pizza delivery girl, they decide to ignore Maggie's orders and engage in battle.

Two concurrent battles ensue, one on a mental plane between Scatterbrain and Brains, another in the motel parking lot between Scrap, Slingshot and Brawn. Scatterbrain learns that his mental powers are much stronger than anyone expected. He defeats Brains, and when he does, they both wake up. Brains had been in the motel room, also comatose. She realizes that 1) the Dynamo 5 kids are tougher than expected, and that 2) their cover is blown, and more authorities are on the way. So Brains and Brawn skedaddle.

Back at D5 HQ, everyone is happy that Scatterbrain has recovered. The mood quickly changes when Myriad walks in and Scatterbrain clocks him for complicating his life back home! The issue ends with a meeting of Brains & Brawn and a couple of other previously vanquished villain: a villainous team in the making.

I hope i haven't done this issue an injustice. I'm tired tonight, but i wanted to get out another post before i turn in. I left out a whole subplot about Visionary's mom finding out that he's a superhero. I think she's gonna sue Maggie.

Here's what i like about Dynamo 5. The characters are likable and are being gradually fleshed out, while their roles in the team remain very clear. The art is strong. Each character is distinctive, and the costume designs are classic superhero stuff. The interpersonal dynamics are fun. The continuing revelation of the ramifications of Captain Dynamo's indiscretions is cool. There are plenty of questions about Maggie's history and motivations, too. I don't know how else to say it except that it's a fun, interesting superhero book with all the elements that make superheroes fun, without a lot of the complications we find in comics from the Big Two.

Good night. :) Comment!

The Sword #2


I wonder how this series would read if the art were more expressive. The characters display emotion, but everything seems restrained. Maybe that adds to a feeling of the bizarre. Or, maybe it limits the emotional impact of the events.

If you're not familiar with the Luna Brothers' style of art, it's been described as pastel painting. To me, it looks like cells from an animated movie. I haven't read about what effect they're trying to achieve. The coloring ads a lot of lighting to the art, but the line work is kind of minimal. The lines are equally weighted, like in the "clear line" style, but there isn't as much detail. I find myself wanting more detail in faces.

The story (spoilers ahead): It picks up right where #1 ended. Three strangers had burst into Dara's house, insisting that her father was somebody named Demetrios, and demanding that he give them "the sword." Her father plead ignorance of all that, so the three strangers, displaying superpowers, killed the family and set the house on fire. The floor gave way under Dara and she fell into an unfinished basement or crawlspace. Since Dara was in a wheelchair, the killers assumed she'd be killed in the fire, and left. However, Dara spotted a shortsword (roman legionaire style) protruding from the dirt. She grabbed it, and her paralysis was instantly cured.

Dara climbs out of the basement. She places the sword in each of her family memebers' hands, hoping that it will restore them to life the way it restored her ability to walk. Though quick thinking, this doesn't work. Dara's shirt catches on fire and she runs to the pond behind the house to put it out.

When the fire department and police show up, Dara decides not to tell them about the sword, or the superpowers of the killers. She had tossed the sword into the pond just as they were arriving. I think her legs are still healed, but she pretends to be paralyzed. The police wonder how she got to and from the pond without her wheelchair, but they don't pursue it much. Dara stays with her friend Julie.

Cut to the three killers. They've seen the reports on TV and know that Dara survived. They figure out that she has the sword. They argue a bit about whether they should go after her themselves, but ultimately decided that the situation is too hot and the sword too dangerous. Apparently the sword is very powerful, but maybe only when wielded by someone of this bloodline? It's too early to tell. They decided to send mercenaries to kidnap Dara and force her to tell them where the sword is. This scene felt a bit long, as it was all dialog, but it showed that these villains are smart and actually think ahead, which is nice. Smart characters are good.

The guy they hire to kidnap Dara is a real sleazeball. He sells drugs for one of the three, and is also involved in prostitution. The second panel he appears in shows him snorting cocaine off a hooker's breast. I'm not sure what the authors were trying to establish with this sequence. Maybe they wanted to show us that this guy is very bad, and therefore scary? But he comes across as merely a sleazy loser, and while he clearly has no regard for other people, he doesn't seem at all competent.

At her family's funeral, Dara learns some interesting stuff about her dad. He was an English professor. Some of his students are at the funeral, and they mention how they loved the stories he told about some ancient warrior called Demetrios, who was four thousand years old. Maybe Dara's father really was the Demetrios that the three killers were looking for, but he had partially lost his memories? So, he didn't know who he really was (thinking he was just a normal person), but the memories of his immortal life were leaking out through fiction? Or, maybe he was just pretending not to know what the killers were talking about, and isn't really dead? That would make him a very despicable villain, since he let his family be murdered rather than give up the sword.

The issue closes with the mercenaries, armed with uzis and such, about to jump out of a van and kidnap Dara.

I'm less sold on this series after this issue than i was after the first. The visuals just don't convey the drama that the script implies. The sleazy villain is a big turn off, too. He's not even an entertaining villain, he's the kind you hope gets killed at the earliest opportunity just to get him out of the story. I'll pick up issue three, and decide whether to continue with the series based on how that one goes.