Broken Frontier

Batman, The Spirit, and Doc Savage.  Three of my favorites.  A new universe with the DC brand for them to play in.  On paper, First Wave seems awesome.

Azzarello is just like the book.  He has an awesome pedigree.  100 Bullets, loved runs of Batman and Hellblazer.  He wrote one of the premiere entries for Vertigo’s Crime line.  He loves the same things I do. 

So why doesn’t any of it work?

Well, first there is Azzarello.  He is a great idea guy.  And the whole concept of this book is a bright cartoon light bulb over the head of all other comics.  Those books of his I mentioned are great ideas, but there’s always something missing.  This book suffers from the same affliction as Filthy Rich.  The writer throws a whole bunch of stuff in the air and sees what sticks.  Unfortunately, this issue doesn’t give much of anything time to stick.

Don’t get me wrong, there are bright spots.  He has the mystique of Savage down.  The Spirit sequence is probably the most thorough and expert exposition the writer has ever produced.  In fact, I would like to see the author take on The Spirit full time.  He seems to have the blue suited reanimated avenger down, even if he is massively confused about his supporting cast and the way the character works.

There is not a story here.  Doc’s dad died, but didn’t.  There is gold, jungle action, a nosy reporter with a bias against the Bronze one.  There are some weird goings on that Dolan tips off Colt about.  The Blackhawks show up in some weird morphed style.  Batman is nowhere to be seen.  Worse yet, there was a preview book to get this going, the Batman/Doc Savage Special from last year.  That story didn’t really end, and one assumed it would be continued here.  Well, you know what they say about assuming things, right? 

It just never jells into a cohesive story.  Granted there are five more issues to flesh out whatever is going on here, but the cool thing about the old movie serials, that are nodded to about every other panel, is that they felt like a complete story that was to be continued next week.  You were excited and anticipated the next chapter.  There isn’t enough of a chapter here to hint at something to feel anything about.

It is all style and no substance.  Well, that’s another area where it excels, and not just in the written sense either.  Morales, who is an artist with a certain following already, turns in what is probably his best work ever.  There is a weird sheen to the colors of Rufino that are oddly out of place, but all the rest is pitch perfect.  Those nods to serials that I mentioned mostly come through in the art.  Sure, jungle settings are important to that, but the way Morales works with shading is as crucial to the pulpy feel of the book as anything Azzarello does in the script.  His lines are tight and the book walks the line between the absurd and the dark with ease.

It’s a shame that the writing doesn’t match, especially given that on paper this is a dream team.  Azzarello should be able to walk the line between the superhero and the pulp, but he fails.  It is all gloss and shine, all style and feel.  There is no soul and more importantly, other than kicking off a new line, there is no purpose to this story.  It is forgettable and the stars of the book deserve more than that.