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THE EXILES #5
"Up North and In the Green"
Recommended (8/10)
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Marvel Comics
Writer: Judd Winick
Pencils: Jim Calafiore
Inks: Mark McKenna
Colors: Transparency Digital
Letters: Sharpefont
Editor: Mike Marts
Price: $2.25 US/$3.50 CAN |
I enjoy Winick's work on Barry Ween, but I never expected him to be able to take a ragtag bunch of new characters (including two or three I didn't even like) and make them into such a fun cast. I certainly didn't expect this to be as inventive and fun as it has been, but Winick has so far done a nice job of maintaining the balance of developing relationships between the team and moving forward the characters and showing off gimmicky new realms of travel. He's avoided the What If...? trap so far,
not worrying so much about the why and how of the alternate realities as the
immediate problems, and he's been aided by solid artwork by McKone and McKenna.
Though McKone is absent this issue, McKenna's inks helps to keep guest artist
Calafiore in the spirit of things, and this is a lighter toned story than the
rather dark two-parter the team just went through.
There's a risk of becoming formulaic with this book, in that every two or three issues we're going to have a scene where the team has just arrived and has to figure out where they are. However, these scenes are always fun, and Winick and Calafiore demonstrate why this issue. While they're trying to figure out where they are, Morph flirts with Sunfire, Mimic's powers are explored and the team in general gets to have a little personal time. The moments between the story are often more fun than the plot itself in Exiles.
A lot of what Winick brings
to this book is his sense of humor. Morph is the most direct evidence of that,
as he has some hysterical dialogue (if "Aim for the water! The waaaaaaaaaa--"
doesn't make you laugh this issue, I'd be surprised) and the always amusing
visual gags. However, that sharp sense of dialogue is there for all the
characters, as with TJ's warning to Blink not to teleport the Hulk or
Thunderbird's post-Hulk encounter dialogue. This book always moves along, and
the dialogue is always very readable and entertaining.
I'm also enjoying that the
situations the team comes across are so far not too predictable or familiar.
While the Trial of Phoenix has been well-covered, we don't often see a reality
where Alpha Flight takes on the Hulk, and Winick manages to make this into more
than just a story done because he (or McKone) likes Alpha Flight. Proudstar gets
to learn something about himself from his counterpart, and Mimic gets to
recharge his powers after his battle in the last issue.
In the end, that's what the
book is about. Going around fixing realities may be the team's reason for
existence, but the reason I keep coming back to the book is to see the
development of the characters as they encounter alternate selves, alternate
friends and each other and learn more about the world and themselves.
Email Randy Lander comments about this review. |
