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CAPTAIN MARVEL #30
"Time Flies Conclusion: Jonesing"
Recommended (8/10)
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Marvel Comics
Writer: Peter David
Pencils: Chris Cross
Inks: Anibal Rodriguez & Rich Perotta
Colors: Chris Sotomayor
Letters: Comicraft
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Price: $2.50 US/$4.00 CAN |
So... heard anything about Captain Marvel lately? For those of
you coming in late, there's been a very public brouhaha between Joe Quesada and
Peter David about the future of this book, some of which was predicated on the
disparity between its consistently good reviews and consistently poor sales.
Though I'm not sure this particular issue is the best jumping-on point for new
readers, it's another solid issue in a string of them from Peter David and
Chriscross, and hopefully the online firestorm will get a few more people to
check out a book which is really deserving of the attention.
In fact, this issue is the finale of the four-part "Time Flies" arc which introduced an interesting wrinkle in Rick Jones's story, returned a homicidal complication to Marlo Jones's story and featured some old Peter David-penned favorites like Spider-Man 2099 and the Maestro. It's a fair complaint to say that the issue is steeped in lore from Peter David's prior books, but as the story wraps up, it seems less and less important to have actually read those books. Though fans of Spider-Man 2099 and Incredible Hulk will no doubt get more out of some of the story, David does a pretty
good job of conveying who everybody is and why they're there.
More to the point, he does
what he has always done with this title, mixing cosmic adventure and fairly
broad humor with heretofore unseen success. The plot of Thanatos is undoubtedly
fitting in the cosmic scheme of things, no sillier than what Parallax or the
Anti-Monitor or Thanos or Adam Warlock's nemesis the Magus have tried to do at
various points, but the approach that Thanatos takes plays it for laughs as much
as for serious danger to the lead characters. David maintains an impressive
balance between actual feelings of a threat to the characters and humor, mostly
dialogue-based, revolving around those threats.
This mixture of cosmic and
humor is tough for a writer to pull off, let alone an artist, but Chriscross is
again up to the task. There's a lot of subtle expressive movement to be found in
the faces Chriscross draws, but he's not too shabby when it comes to the action
either. He relies on speed lines to some degree, but he uses them the way good
manga artists use them, to accentuate the action rather than as a cheap way to
avoid drawing backgrounds. He's also called upon to do a variety of weird
characters, from the monstrous and ugly Maestro to the alien Captain Marvel and
Starfox, and he's as good with that as he is at a convincing Marlo Jones or
guest-starring J. Michael Straczynski.
Though the cosmic elements of
this book have been the focus over the last few issues, David has not neglected
my favorite parts of the story, which are the more down-to-earth (relatively
speaking) plot elements surrounding Marlo. The ending is a nice payoff to the
setup of Marlo's wish-fulfillment powers over the last few issues, and while
newer readers may not immediately get it (and even older readers will wonder why
her hair suddenly went blond there at the end), it serves as a nice cliffhanger
ending and a great joke for the regular readers of the book.
Email Randy Lander comments about this review, or discuss it on the Fourth Rail message board. |
