While Peter David is best known for long epics that build upon one another issue by issue, this issue of Fallen Angel is another self-contained story, like many of them have been. Oh, he's still building on the overall story of Angel, Bete Noire and the various characters within, but what he's telling in this one issue story is sort of a morality play about drugs and the culture that supplies them, with the Fallen Angel an unwitting pawn in someone's scheme of revenge and one hell of a surprise kicker thrown in as well. David is channeling his dark side into Fallen Angel, and the results are sometimes gruesome, sometimes darkly funny and always thought-provoking.
One of the things I hadn't quite latched onto about Fallen Angel until this issue is that this series is not about answers. It's about questions. David is exploring questions that most of us are afraid to ask ourselves, the kind of question where there aren't any easy answers and indeed, there might not be any real answers at all. This has come through in the nature of Bete Noire, which is more than just a town in Louisiana but less than an actual gateway into hell, and in the nature of its characters, all of whom have a moral flexibility that makes the Punisher look like a choirboy. What really clicked with me in this particular issue, though, is that beyond exploring the nature of how "superheroes" do their jobs and how the roles of villain and hero can be interchangeable, David is exploring some basic questions about crime and victims and society.
This issue, the focus falls on the drug issue, something that has been covered in-depth everywhere from TV to movies to political talk shows ad infinitum, and will probably continue to be so. David isn't the first creator to have a drug pusher as a sympathetic character, nor is he the first one to explore the dichotomy between someone being kind of likable in a quirky sort of way and yet a dealer of death in so many others. However, I daresay this is the first time we've seen a drug pusher confronted in quite this way with the long-term effects of his actions, and I was quite surprised to learn the true identity of the woman seeking Asia Minor. Don't get the wrong idea... this isn't a "very special episode" of Fallen Angel or anything, it just so happens that the story this issue revolves around questions that relate to the issue of drugs, from the question of supply and demand to the question of personal choice to the question of innocents caught in the crossfire.
The only weakness in this issue, from my point of view, comes from the art, which is odd, given that it's the regular art team on this book and they're usually quite good. However, Lopez's work in this issue is somewhat inconsistent, particularly with the characters' faces, which often look distorted (aside from Lee, who looks realistic and thus contrasts these other interpretations for the other characters), but also in the opening sequence where he draws a baseball in motion with a weirdly distorted shape, presumably to give a sense of motion, although the effect makes it look like he can't draw a circle instead. Overall, the storytelling is still exceptional, and the creepy opening sequence and enigmatic appearance of Lee are perfect, but there's some weird cartoonishness to some of the art that seems out of place.
That said, the artwork is solid if not as exceptional as it usually is, and the story is one of my favorites to come out of the series. David's stories offer up no easy answers, but what they do offer up is compelling questions and dark but often funny character moments, not to mention one of the richest casts of characters to be found in comics. This book is hard to define, not quite a Vertigo dark fantasy but certainly not a standard superhero book either, and this inability to be put in a box could result in the book falling between the cracks. Fallen Angel #13 is another chance to jump onto this highly underrated series, and if you haven't sampled the book yet, this might be the one to check out. You may be surprised to find how appealing the series is to you.
