Broken Frontier

Vincente is a Tango dancer trying to hit the big time but he has a dark past… and you know you can never outrun your past…

Writer Joe Kelly has set himself an interesting task – to use the controlled passions and intricate steps of the Tango as both metaphor and parallel to the intricacies of human relationships as well as navigating the complexities of the criminal underworld. It is a fascinating idea and one that holds a lot of potential but there are a few stumbling blocks here.

Vincente is a Tango dancer in San Francisco. Working clubs, entering competitions, and teaching dance classes at the local YMCA, he hopes to hit the big time with his partner on the dance floor (and sometimes off it as well) Melina. Vincente, however, has a past life and now it looks like that life might be catching up…

Right off the bat, only a handful of pages into this issue, readers are struck by one of the unfortunately inadequacies of the print medium – some things just don’t translate well to the page. Obviously, Kelly wants readers to not just read the Tango between Vincente and Melina but feel it as well but the images on the page just cannot convey the smooth flow of the dance, the quick motions and the slow ones, the rhythm of the dance music and the sound of the singer’s voice. The Tango aspect of the story aside, it is also a bit difficult to get a sense of the main character here in this first issue. The problem is that Kelly seems to be keeping readers a bit too much on the surface for most of the issue. We skate along entirely too fast to even get a chance to care about Vincente. Even when the inevitable damsel in distress shows up to rip his life apart it just feels too predictable – like something we’ve seen just a few too many times before so why should we even care?

The art provided by Adrian Sibar, however, is definitely visually interesting. His figures are elongated, smooth and flexible and he exaggerates some motions for effect. He also crafts with an interesting level of detail – creating intricate and visually interesting patterns on clothing or skin in the form of tattoos. The reader can tell that he is trying to fill the page with grace and action and sexuality but for the most part the printed page just cannot do what he most wants it to do.

Joe Kelly has knocked books out of the park before over the course of his career but Bang! Tango is his first work for the edgier Vertigo line. While he and artist Sibar try to craft an unexpected Tango of crime and the futility of trying to escape the past, it is a dance readers know the steps of entirely too well at least as far as this first issue is concerned.