Broken Frontier

An acrophobic stewardess, a man with more aliases than Frank Abagnale, and a vigilante group out to steal airplanes populate this giant sized first issue.

Cairo was a modern fable that worked off the reader’s preconceptions of the characters. Here Wilson does much the same, but with more elaborate flair. Here, the characters don’t really seem to be grounded just yet and considering that most of the excitement happens at 20,000 feet in the air, that could be expected.

It’s not that the characters aren’t defined. Blythe is defined as a woman in an impossible life. Seriously, she is afraid of heights but works as a flight attendant. It is a crazy thing to do to a character, but it allows for the woman to act in the abnormal way she does here. Anyone who signed up to do what they are afraid of would have to be a little off balance and prone to poor judgement choices. When she first meets Zayn, he is dressed as a Pakistani and every time she seems him after that he has morphed into another nationality, accent and all. It is this character who is the most intriguing of the book; is he a secret agent, a terrorist, or just a really rich guy who has fallen for a flight attendant?

Blythe’s initial reaction to the tall, dark and handsome stranger leads to an encounter with a group that calls themselves the Etesian Front and the guys seem to be ubiquitous on Clearfleet’s flights. Their goal seems to be to take down terrorists, but their methods are a little extreme. By the end of the book the reader is unsure who the bad guys are and maybe a little confused about what is going on at all.

It was this kind of interaction of the principle characters that caused some negative criticism of Wilson and Perker’s first graphic novel. Cairo was like a Neil Gaiman novel set in the real world. Magic was always around the corner but just out of reach. I stated earlier that the book worked by playing on the preconceptions of the characters. Here there is much the same going on. Everyone in the book thinks they have each other pegged and by the end of the comic, at least Blythe knows she understands very little of what is going on. It is this subtle manipulation of the reader that makes reading a Wilson penned story such a joy and I can’t wait to see where this flight is going to take the reader.

Perker’s art is somewhere between the minimalist cartoon style seen in newspapers and the more highly rendered work of the mainstream comic artist. He uses lines to create emotion, but still uses a loose swoop to create the face. It is a unique style that works well. This book is not as lavishly illustrated as the creators’ first tome together. Airports and planes just aren’t as interesting as underground rivers and Middle Eastern architecture. However, this is by no means a lesser work. The lack of interesting backgrounds lets Perker’s ability to convey action stand on its own and it is as solid as one could ask for.

Cairo was Fables without all the story book characters. Air is Alice in Wonderland without all the drugs and set high in the sky. Wilson has tasted the sky and wants us to know that it is unlike any other taste we will ever know.