Broken Frontier

The Cloak and Dagger one-shot is fantastic.  It’s everything you could want from a mainstream comic. 

For starters, the artwork is brilliant.  Together, Emily Warren and Mark Brooks bring a clarity to Cloak and Dagger that make them come alive in this revitalization of two perennial under-the-radar Marvel characters.  There is so much attention to detail in Brooks’ anatomy, expressions and costume designs.  It gives the characters a dynamic and solid quality that makes the story easy to immerse yourself into.  Warren’s colors gave each of their powers a tangible feel, which played a big role in making this book as vibrant as it was. 

Writer Stuart Moore does so much in this story.  Cloak and Dagger have been around since the early 80s, but despite all of their cameos in other titles and all of Marvel’s attempts to give them their own series, the two have never been that popular.  Recently, they’ve been seen in Runaways, Dark X-Men and Civil War, playing a fairly large part in each.  Still, no one really seems to care about them, but that’s usually because they’re so exclusive.  Even on teams, they tend to stay quiet and together.  In this story, we see things a bit more from their side, as Moore delves into Dagger’s desire to be accepted by the X-Men and Cloak’s personal history. 

Moore does an incredible job developing the duo, to the point where you relate to them more than the X-Men.  This is peculiar because the X-Men, since conception, have been the symbol of the outcast.  They’re despised and hated by the outside world and thus stay together and protect themselves from those that persecute them.  Cloak and Dagger are also like this, and it is strange to see the X-Men being so insensitive to their plight.  Cyclops shrugs them off to deal with mutant business and Dr. Nemesis makes Dagger feels unwanted because she is not a mutant.  It was strange to see Dagger try so hard to be accepted.  Usually she and Cloak are inseparable, and neither really want anything other than to be with each other.  They are apart for the majority of this issue, and therein lies the conflict.

Cloak also seeks acceptance, but instead of the mutant community, he returns to his old neighborhood, where he finds his old flame.  They fall back into their old rhythm and Cloak finally feels a sense of normalcy again.  Unfortunately, she works with some old X-men villains, who kidnap Cloak in order to brainwash him into giving up his powers.  This works, to a degree, until Dagger and the X-Men rescue him.  After, Cloak and Dagger again realize that all they really want is each other. 

This revitalization did an incredible job of capturing my interest, and I would like to know more about Cloak and Dagger.  However, it’s reasonable to think that their tendency to remain exclusive would be a difficult obstacle to overcome.  It would be exciting to see them in another monthly series, especially with the seed for a new villain, Cloak’s ex, planted.  It would have to be the same creative team, though.  There’s magic there.