It's almost unfair to review the first issue of Phantom Jack, given that it's only about half (at best) written by San Giacomo, with the rest of the story being down to heavy editing from its time in the Marvel Epic process. Certainly the book reads like one afflicted with the overly slow pacing that many see in Marvel's comics, because this story is a sort of scattershot introduction to Jack's world, jumping through a variety of scenes and giving us a basic overview but not really connecting with the reader at this early stage. While the story is somewhat lackluster, however, the artwork is pretty sharp, a little darkly colored perhaps but with a beautiful faux-painted approach that gets across the reality of the world that San Giacomo is aiming for.
Phantom Jack begins in Iraq in 2002, during the U.N. weapons inspections. This is our first introduction to Jack's invisibility powers and his somewhat cowardly personality, and it's an interesting scene, but weak in a couple of regards. For one thing, setting your lead character up as someone who lets his friend get dragged off to a horrible death when he has the powers to do something about it puts you in a hole that's pretty tough to dig out of, unless you're going in a deliberately anti-hero direction. More importantly, however, while the sequence makes for a somewhat shocking introduction to Jack's invisibility, it also makes for a confusing one. Even knowing the premise of the book, I was left confused... did Jack hide, and was San Giacomo making a Stan Lee type reference to his eventual disappearing powers, or does he already have them, in which case we've sort of started in the middle of the story?
The failure to give an "origin" to Jack's invisibility powers can simply be written off as an odd choice, however, one that I didn't care for but which certainly isn't unprecedented. However, this unclear storytelling shows up again at the tail end of the issue, when the effects of Jack's good deed the night before are revealed to have been basically nothing. Again I was left questioning what happened... did the thugs come back? Was the damage already done? Maybe these are unimportant details, but the questions took me out of the story, which is a storytelling problem.
If the story was something of a disappointment, the artwork was a pleasant surprise. I'd seen Breitweiser's work on Noble Causes, and liked it there, and his work here is pretty strong. He could use a little less stiffness, a little more energy in his layouts, but the basic groundwork is there, and the colors by Jaime Jones really serve the work well. The art is sometimes a little too dark, but I can forgive that for the times that it does work, like the foggy sudden appearance of Jack in the park or the beautiful establishing shots of Baghdad early on.
As I said, it's probably unfair to judge Phantom Jack based on its first issue, since it's hardly the unvarnished version of the book that the creators had originally intended to present. However, what you can tell from the first issue is that there's potential in this story, but the creators need to make the character a lot more sympathetic, and fast. In fact, fast should be the keyword for future issues, because there's potential here, but the story needs to move a lot quicker (and get stronger in terms of dialogue and structure) if it's going to engage potential new readers.
