The comics industry is littered with great concepts that were executed poorly, so it's always nice when someone gets it right. Wildguard, a blend of super-heroes and reality shows, could easily have been too serious or too goofy, but Nauck has hit exactly the right blend, playing up the inherent silliness of super-hero conventions without taking it so far into ridicule that you can't take the story or characters seriously at all. It's like a great combination of the Legion of Super-Heroes tryout issues and the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League.
Nauck ran with the idea of a "reality show" super-hero comic by creating a website where readers can vote on which characters they want to make the team. The real trick to something like this is that there have to be enough characters that voting seems worthwhile, rather than a half-dozen good characters and three or four dozen more obvious morts. Fortunately, Nauck has done a fantastic job of creating the enormous roster of this book. Many of them fit into standard archetypes, but for every couple of jungle-men or energy blasters, you've got unusual characters like a floating brain, a robot with an inferiority complex or a heroine who is self-aware of variant costumes and action figures.
Even the archetypal characters are fun, though. Nauck has an enormous cast to work with here, and ran the risk of just crowding the book with characters who never really got any spotlight time. Without losing the feeling of a giant cast, though, Nauck has done a very good job of spotlighting some of them. The burgeoning relationship between flame-wielder Ignacia and Tarzan-esque Jun-Go plays out nicely, and I got a huge kick out of Jun-Go's origin, which seems like a fun enough idea to merit a spin-off mini-series. Red Rover's ability to fight free of his captors, despite being half-tranqed, is like a more family friendly "Wolverine versus the Hellfire Club" sequence. Four's role as leader, producer and object of hero-worship makes for some interesting moments. And I'm very curious to find out exactly what the deal is with Strong-Bot.
Over the course of the first two issues, I've been a little disappointed in the artwork, which doesn't really seem as strong as the work that Nauck & Stucker did on Young Justice. It's still solid work, though, and this issue shows some definite improvement. If nothing else, I have to credit the art team for so many interesting character designs, but there are also some nice background elements that show off the unique situation of this team, such as paid-for ads in their hangar. And there are some pretty impressive moments in this issue, including the cliffhanger moment at the end, the shots of Jun-Go's former team in action and Strong-Bot's underwater difficulties.
Wildguard is a lot of fun, a super-hero book that gets the joy of the super-hero genre and makes it easy to share. Without the continuity of a shared universe or a sort of topical, hip, deconstructionist take, Nauck is cut off from the easy way of gaining attention for a super-hero title in this market, but Wildguard is entertaining because it's classic super-hero stuff with a twist, executed very well. It also seems worth noting that this Wednesday is the deadline for voting on the Wildguard cast, so if you haven't voted yet, now's the time. And if you haven't checked out Wildguard at all yet, well, it's well past time.
