Broken Frontier

Cebulski brings his mash up of Marvel icons and the world’s most famous bed time stories to the Avengers. This time we have Captain America as Peter Pan, Wanda Maximoff as Wendy and Klaw as Hook.

This is a beautifully illustrated version of Peter Pan with characters from the history of Marvel as the principle characters. In addition to the listing above we have Wasp as Tinker Bell, Pietro as Wendy’s brother and Iron Man, Black Panther, Thor & Hawkeye comprise the Lost Boys. Wanda is not plagued by the prospect of growing so much as she is the onset of her powers. It is all a pretty straight adaptation of Barrie’s classic tale of youth’s struggle with independence and maturity.

Cebulski and Marvel have been moderately successful with the Fairy Tales concept so far. You certainly have to give them props for trying something so bold. This one took a few minutes to get into. The idea of Captain America as the kid who doesn’t want to grow up was a strange concept to me at first, but it seems apt what with Steve Rogers’ (and Bucky’s) time displacement. Even more so, Cap has always been the eternal Boy Scout. Not quite a real person in his ideology, but never too far fetched. Wanda is the oddest choice here. She seems to have just been chosen by default. Klaw, of course, is a perfect stand-in for Hook. It’s a benign story, certainly appropriate for the all ages crowd and not unentertaining. Is it Cebulski’s best work? Far from it, even for the Fairy Tales series it is a middling effort.

Lemos’s art is beautiful. It is somewhere between the art deco influence present in Melinda Gebbie’s work on Lost Girls and the work of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry famous for his work on The Little Prince. I imagine that with Cebulski’s tendency to go with Japanese inspired artists, many will think that Manga is an influence here and it may be, but those are the influences this reader sees. The designs are imaginative which is important given the fantastical nature of the story. Strain does an exemplary job with the colors both enhancing Lemos’s pencils and grounding Cebulski’s story in its storybook tradition.

All in all, Avengers: Fairy Tales seems to be a nice enough book. Certainly a good read for the younger set. The spirit of the project makes it a worthwhile effort and will continue to garner my support.