Broken Frontier

Sally Floyd is the voice of the voiceless. She may be an alcoholic wracked with self-pity, but in the final installment of Generation M, she becomes a hero.

This quiet, dramatic comic book follows the exploits of Sally Floyd, an alcoholic, divorced reporter who lost her three-year-old daughter shortly before the events of M-Day (the day in Marvel Comics when 90% of the world’s mutant population lost their powers). After M-Day and thanks to some former connections and a healthy dose of pity, she is allowed to re-launch her column, "The Mutant Diaries," only now it has a different title: "The Ex-Mutant Diaries." The piece has a simple premise: tell the stories of mutants who have lost their powers. That simple premise leads to some intriguing tales and Sally records them all. While writing her column, she attracts the attention of a homicidal, self-loathing mutant calling himself The Ghoul who wants her to tell his story. He leaves a trail of dead mutants in his wake and scares the journalist into a bottle several times. But she keeps on writing, obsessed with the belief that someone needs to tell these stories. It is not standard Marvel fair. There are no super heroics in the Marvel Comics sense and the villain may be a mutant lunatic, but that is all he is, nothing more. Generation M is a story of dealing with survival after tragedy—Sally Floyd’s, The Ghoul’s, and the entire mutant world’s.

Jenkins is a master storyteller. In issue #5 Dani Moonstar explains what life has become for her since she lost her powers, "I had magic Sally, and I lost it. Everything slipped away. I haven’t dreamed since M-Day." After listening to Dani’s story, Sally decides to use her column to reveal the whole truth behind her daughter’s death and the downward spiral that followed. Jenkins crafts this using Sally’s voice, so when reading, it is as though a mother is telling us about the loss of her child. It is tragic to the point of tears, watching this woman’s life fall apart around her. And knowing what we know by the end of this issue makes it even worse. While Sally’s column is on the shelves shedding some light on her as a person, there is still the matter of the lunatic that needs to be solved. With some help from the X-Men, who first visited her in issue #4 with a surprise ending involving Angel, she lures the lunatic out and there is a battle. It is the only battle this comic has seen and may be a bit anti-climactic as far as comic book battles go, but that is because it is not the climax. The climax is on the last page.

Through the past four issues the art has been a perfect fit for the tale being told. Bachs’ pencils are gritty and unrefined, like the characters of the story, yet the backgrounds are realistic. A bullpen looks like a bullpen right down to the stained coffee cups. There is a flashback scene wherein Sally remembers waiting in the hospital for news about her daughter. Bachs depicts Sally’s emotions clearly. Even without word balloons, the reader would know what was going on. Though his pencils don’t seem appropriate for the superhero action scene in this issue, the scene is short and necessary and flows into the following scenes. Bachs captures the people of this story well, from the sad mutants who have lost their powers, to the pitiable Ghoul who wishes he did, and finally Sally, the shaky stalwart heroine who is one of the strangest, most intriguing new characters coming out of Marvel in too long a time.

Sally’s sad story of survival is told through the tales of, quite literally, the powerless. Though it is situated in a fantasy world of mutants and superheroes, this story could not be more real.