Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Captain Marvel v2: Down TPB

How in the world did this book last as long as it did?

Kelly Sue DeConnick has built a cult following around Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers. The Carol Corps clearly adore this book. And I admit there is a lot to like. DeConnick has a great supporting cast, a nice handle on regular guest stars (including Monica Rambeau!) Death Cry is a great choice of villain too, considering the main drama of this collection is CM’s loss of her flying powers.

And that’s a neat idea! We saw in the opening chapters how important flying is to Carol, so seeing that ability fading away is heartbreaking. And I love how CM deals with the warnings too; she just ignores them and figures she’s stubborn enough to get along. That is my kind of character!

There is a bit too much talking for me, and I can’t make myself care about every member of the expansive supporting cast, but there is a lot of stuff to keep me interested.

But the art.

I dropped this book after one issue because of the art. I hoped when I grabbed this trade that the issue would have been addressed. It has not. Dexter Soy’s artwork is impressionistic, lacking backgrounds and settings in almost every panel. His actual figure work is OK when dealing with heroic characters (or sharks) but I never get a sense of where the action is happening. Filipe Andrade draws the 2nd half of the collection, and he clearly never saw a model sheet. He’s drawing a different main character than the one that appears on the cover of this trade. His backgrounds are stronger, but his actual figure work is inconsistent. Characters change sizes between panels, their eyes expand and contract like a manga book.


This is a fair story torpedoed by art that is clearly not my style. It could be that I’m just not the target audience for this book, but I’d argue the relaunch (with a more classic artist) will prove that the art hurt this book. Overall, this is an EVIL representation of a character filled with potential. 

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