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H-E-R-O #5
"Meet Matt Allen"
Highly Recommended (9/10)
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DC Comics
Writer: Will Pfeifer
Artist: Kano
Colors: J.D. Mettler
Letters: Ken Lopez
Editors: Peter Tomasi
Price: $2.50 US/$4.25 CAN |
In the first H-E-R-O arc, Pfeifer and Kano explored a guy who had nothing: he worked at a fast food job, could barely talk to the girl he liked and was generally a screw-up, until the H-Dial changed his life. In the second arc, or at least the first issue of it, they pull a reversal, exploring a guy who has it all and showing how the H-Dial can screw with his life as well. In a way, this is a story about addiction, as things that were important fall by the wayside, unnoticed, in the face of the overwhelming need, but it's also a story about selfishness, cluelessness, self-delusion and, of course, a dial that can turn people into super-heroes.
Where the first H-E-R-O story started with something of a slow burn, this story leaps right into things. Pfeifer doesn't spend a lot of time showing us who Matt Allen was before he found the dial. Rather than spend an issue or two on his perfect life, with great job, loving family and good position amongst his friends, we're introduced to the concept through narration on the first page, and then shown that Matt is already starting to lose it. Given his role as a corporate type, it's easy to read this as an 80s-era cocaine addiction story, as Matt slowly loses focus on what's important, unaware that anyone else even notices thanks to his own heightened experiences.
The surroundings of Matt's life are given more attention by Pfeifer than they are by the lead character. As a result, we get to know his friend, his wife and his child, and though we don't see how we was before the device, it's easy to get a sense of it from their reactions to how he has changed. In addition, it's a lot easier to feel sympathy for his friends than it is for Matt. The reader knows the reason that Matt is ducking out of his obligations, and the way he's doing it, and we can see that it's an escape for him rather than a sense of responsibility or just a desire to do what's right. It's a rush, a thrill and a secret.
Fortunately, Matt is not so much the protagonist of this story as the gateway into the story and the main focus of the first issue. Unlike 100 Bullets, which has been mentioned many times as an influence on this series, Pfeifer seems inclined to follow the H-Dial directly from person to person. Although he is setting up new characters as the dial passes into other hands, in most cases we get to see it passed off, and we may have even met the next wielder. This sense of continuity is a benefit to the book, and keeps things connected even while the individual issue is a jumping-on point, absolutely clear to anyone who missed the first four issues of the series.
While I've noted Kano's work as being influenced by the style of Eduardo Risso, I can't believe it took me this long to notice another similarity, to the work of another of my favorite artists, Guy Davis. Kano uses a somewhat sketchy approach with a few distinctive features to flesh out the characters, and he is able to manage both an everyman, view on the street type of look as well as capturing the more exotic super-heroics at the same time. He is also doing a great job with the super-hero costume designs, which suggest a lot about the character at a glance, important given that the heroes often spend only a panel or two on the page.
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