Broken Frontier

With Incorruptible #8, Mark Waid has potentially produced a make or break issue for series followers hesitant about remaining with the title.  Despite the continuation of Domingues' overtly cartoon-esque depictions of what are very serious and often times dark storylines, Waid has given audiences an important "carrot" in the tease that readers may finally see champion Max Damage interact with members of Waid's sister book, Irredeemable.

Waid opens Incorruptible #8 with the Diamond Gang's attempted assassination of a recently-awoken and therefore power-deprived Max Damage.  Shot and injured, Damage is rescued by Annie who has assumed the role of Jailbait.  While most of this action is nothing new to the series and it fails to really advance the plot along much further, it does provide Waid with a platform from which to caricature and in some cases even lampoon the superhero genre, an ability he has perfected throughout his career.  For example, Jailbait's acknowledgement of her own transformation into a sidekick through a tragic origin story or the conversation between she and Damage where they define what a superhero truly is are typical Waid fare and help move the story along nicely in these early pages.

The remainder of the story, however, does feel somewhat disjointed in parts as the transition between sequences is jarring at times.  After Damage and Jailbait escape the hospital grounds, they are immediately shown interrogating the leadership of the Diamond Gang.  Although Waid spares readers yet another superhero brawl, he veers quite close to it as Damage extracts information on how the Gang obtained information about his only weakness.  One of the other problems in this section is that after Damage captures the Gang members, he takes the time to soapbox and monologue to them and Jailbait about the Plutonian, politics, and race; and while the purpose and intent of the speech is revealed when Damage drops off his prisoners in the midst of an ethnic neighborhood, allowing them to enact their own revenge on these brutal killers, it just reads as awkward and out of place a second or third time through.  It seems we're learning more about Damage's character, but it would have been smoother and perhaps even more effective had Waid given audiences character details, beliefs, and motivations through action and not simply what appears as a rehearsed speech.

As stated in the review of Incorruptible #7, the series should be a better book and with the last two offerings, Waid's story is not living up to the standards he has established in Irredeemable or any of his current Marvel projects.  While there are definitely little gems here and there from issue to issue, the artistic problems (which have been discussed at length in prior reviews) combined with less-than-stellar storylines are doing a disservice to such a novice series that has so much potential.  Getting back to the energy and the atmosphere Waid originally conveyed in the first Incorruptible arc or utilizing the moment for a cross-over with Irredeemable seems necessary if the series is to flourish and grow beyond shadows of villain-turned-hero exploits or superhero punch fests that all too often overwhelm good stories.