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THE PULSE #4
"Thin Air Part 4"
Recommended (8/10)
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Marvel Comics
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Pencils: Mark Bagley
Inks: Scott Hanna
Colors: Pete Pantazis
Letters: Cory Petit
Editor: Andy Schmidt
Price: $2.99 US/$4.25 CAN |
This might be the most frustrating book that Bendis writes for me, because it seems like for every thing I absolutely love, there's something else that I really don't like. I loved Pulse #1, hated Pulse #2, started warming back up to Pulse #3, and really liked this issue. On balance, I guess I like the series, although it's definitely weaker than Alias, which it sprung from. At any rate, this issue brings to a boil the story of Norman Osborn's secret identity, complete with a take on Osborn that is as creepy as anything Dafoe did in the movie. It also features a terrific scene between Ben Urich and Spider-Man and another great scene between Luke Cage and Jessica Jones, who for me are the real stars of the book, even if it really is structured like an ensemble piece. Structurally erratic, The Pulse has a lot going for it, and while I'll just as likely wind up hating issue five or six, I'm a fan again right now.
Bendis has been given one of the stinkiest lemons in Marvel continuity with which to make lemonade in the first Pulse arc, and that's the living, breathing Norman Osborn. Osborn's return to life was a huge mistake, one of those things you can't ever fully correct, and it bugs me every time we see him. Fortunately, Bendis makes use of this to point out the injustice of Osborn's continued existence, in a gripping piece of argument between Peter Parker and Ben Urich. Ben's frustration at realizing that being right doesn't always mean winning, or Peter's shared frustrations, are very vivid and effective.
And yet... it is this scene that also holds some of the problems in the book. It's another case of Bendis exposing Peter Parker's identity to someone else, which Bendis does often enough that you'd think it was his favorite sport. And while I can buy Urich being smart enough to figure it out, I'm getting a little tired of everyone knowing Peter's identity. In addition, one of the underpinnings of Urich's argument is something Bendis himself wrote, which feels like cheating and then using something you made up as evidence. It also highlights another problem with Bendis's take on the Marvel Universe, in that he likes to bring realism into this superhero world, and while some of that is great for making the books resonate, too much of it makes you realize how ineffectual and unrealistic superheroes really are. Having Peter know that the man who murdered the love of his life is still walking around and being unable to do anything about it walks pretty close to the line of "Then why bother having a Spider-Man?" for me.
The big selling point of the issue, though, the really cool stuff? That's all between Luke Cage and Jessica Jones. The talk about her dream of her kid, the playful banter between them, this really is one of the best couples in comics right now. And Bendis has done a great job of making Luke Cage street tough without turning him into a gangsta cliche. Then there's the really interesting moral dilemma in the issue with Jessica worrying about bodyguarding while she's pregnant. That's another one of those tightropes that Bendis is walking, because it's easy to look at Jessica as being wildly irresponsible in taking her unborn child into this kind of situation, but having her address it makes it more palatable.
I've been riding Bagley the whole time he's been doing this book, and I'm still pretty sure he wasn't the ideal choice to launch this book. However, for every weird-ass giant head that he draws, there's some perfect expression, and for every somewhat generic layout, there's a stunning moment, like the double-page splash at the end of the book. Bagley's style is too "superhero" for my taste on this book, which is decidedly not superhero in tone, but while he's not perfect, his work on this issue is stronger than on the last and the rapport he's built up with Bendis on Ultimate Spider-Man pays off in storytelling that gets across what the script is going for.
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