Broken Frontier

Michael Miller, the Human Flame.  Really they don’t come any more small time than him, but when you kill the Martian Manhunter and help set off one of the biggest double crosses/mass homicides of all time, you get to make the big time.  Problem is, everyone wants a piece of him, heroes, super-villains, mobsters, his family, you name it.  Homeboy has to run and run fast... oh, now I get the title.

Final Crisis may have been the big failed experiment in storytelling, but as some people will recall, I said that the ideas were solid and big.  When Final Crisis ended, it was at a weird time.  It and Batman had been so late that not much of the DC Universe synced up.  This led to a delay in the books being built in.  Now with Run, we see the whole line catching up.  The Crisis has happened and everyone is playing the blame game.  What better scapegoat than the unknowing participant in Libra’s gambit and the guy who offed the heart and soul of the JLA?

Yeah, I don’t get the Libra thing either. Talk to me next month when I have had a chance to reread Final Crisis in the Deluxe Hardcover edition.  It’s okay though, it doesn’t matter.  All the reader needs to know is that everybody is pissed at Mr. Miller.  So he runs. While he is running something happens though.  The small timer who has only looked after himself, actually starts to look after himself.  Bullets fly and people get hurt and die.  Now the heroes have a new reason to want him brought in. 

It is a tricky bit of character development that Sturges makes look entirely too easy.  That’s the thing with this book.  Like when Simone is on her game (see Secret Six), it is so fun and so effortless.  Maybe that is why this first issue seems so much brighter than the event book that set it up.  So much thought, effort and rewriting went into Final Crisis that the fun got sucked up into a void somewhere and we were left with a disjointed mess of a story that failed to live up to the hype. 

That works against the reputation of this book.  It is a tie-in to the Morrison failure and seems very reminiscent of a story thread featuring the Pied Piper and the Trickster.  DC loves to do everything again, just look at how many books feature "Crisis" in the title or how many times Batman died last fall.  Every once in a while they get it right.  See 52, which negates the need for Countdown or Trinity or the year without Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman that is quickly approaching.  Here, it is all good.  This is a fun, gritty and violent comic.  It isn’t for the kiddies, but it isn’t full of graphic bloodletting, profanity, or sex either.  It is just dark and to point a finger at the pundits - yes, you can be dark and fun at the same time.

Of course, this a comic book and it would be nothing without its pictures and Sturges’s phenomenal writing has been paired with Freddie Williams II.  Williams has been a bit of an emerging talent of late.  His blocky style has defined itself as he went from his looser lumpy style of the past and assumed a bit of Norton’s thick lines working on Robin and Countdown, where a house style must prevail.  The pencils here have a little bit more personality than that work, but are just as skillfully executed.  The artist has officially gone from an aspirer to the throne to being one of the most solid storytellers in the field.  The genius of the blazing lamb mascot bursting from a frame in the playground scene is proof in and of itself.

That’s why I love DC Comics.  Given enough time, the characters and ideas take the reins from the powers that be and the fans are given big exciting stories.  Perfection is something to aspire to and this book is far from perfect, but it has a wit and pace that lacks from some of the big event books of any company.  In that respect it is a bit of a breath of fresh air.  Yes, reader, you should get over the taste that Final Crisis left in your mouth and run to get this book.