A promising debut for Image's new super-hero line, Firebreather is a fun and unassuming first issue with an interesting premise. Hester is far too talented as an artist to be this good a writer, but he seems to have an imagination for concepts that sets him amongst the top echelon of the industry, whether it's a dead man in a high-tech exoskeleton, a wrestler with an evil mask or in this case, a boy who is half-Godzilla style monster. Instead of going for the monster movie approach, however, Hester and Kuhn play this as a teenage drama/super-hero book along the lines of the kind of thing Lee and Kirby cooked up in the early Marvel days.
Though the idea is original, the way the book plays out is fairly traditional, and so far I've been surprised by what I've read of the Image super-hero line in that respect. To use a Bendis analogy, this has more in common with Ultimate Spider-Man than it does with Powers, especially when you consider how much of the story relates to the cliques of high school. Duncan's quick assessment of the cliques at his new school and where he fits in the school social order is a lot of fun, and his acceptance of his outcast nature is an interesting twist on the cliche.
Where the book really succeeds in grabbing me is in the characterization. Duncan is cynical, but he's not completely bitter, and his sense of humor comes through in a terrific sequence with classmate Ken Rogers, even as his darker side is explored in his dreams. I'm not quite as sold on the principal, whose treatment of Duncan seems like the kind of thing a lawsuit-conscious administrator would never say in this day and age, but it does help to reinforce the kind of prejudice that Duncan has had to face in his life.
While the high school segments are interesting, and are the meat of the book, I was especially pleased with the bookend sequences that establish a little more about Duncan's father. It's pretty clear that his father is dangerous and powerful from the opening sequence, and once can't help sympathizing a little with the government agent introduced in the closing sequence given that truth. Andy Kuhn is good throughout, but he's at his best when he's depicting the monster's rampage in the opening or the combat sequence at the end, and I was pleased to see that his artwork continues to grow and mature. His work reminds me of a blend of Ted Naifeh, Mike Avon Oeming and Phil Hester, and his unusual design for Duncan and his father really help to establish their alien nature without losing all the humanity necessary to make Duncan sympathetic.
Firebreather does have its quirks that I didn't like, specifically a coloring palette that looks downright odd and too focused on the red-orange end of the spectrum, but it looks like an interesting new entry into the super-hero field. While the super-hero genre is pretty crowded these days, there's certainly room for another book that focuses on the high school end of things, and it looks like Firebreather may be as much about high school social interaction as it is about giant firebreathing monsters and their spawn.
