Broken Frontier

In 1985, a child reads the next to penultimate chapter of Secret Wars and suddenly, Marvel Super Villains start to appear in real life.

Mark Millar. Some people love him, some people hate him. I’ll admit, I’m somewhat on the fence, but more likely to like him than not. If for no other reason than his ability to get inside the mind of his characters. I’m talking honest dialogue here. He gets people. Especially the loner awkward comic geek. Funny that, if you read his introduction to the collected version of Wanted, that all becomes clear when you realize that he was one. Sure, Geoff Johns, Ed Brubaker, Mark Waid and the ilk wear their geekdom on their sleeves, but Millar isn’t afraid to admit that he was one. The reason I know this is because the kids, like Toby, are pitch perfect.

There is a wonder to this book that I hadn’t really gotten from a Millar story before. I’m unsure I’ve ever gotten it from a comic book before. I have felt it before. It is similar to that first viewing of The Goonies or E.T. when you are a child. Those stories just speak to the kids in all of us. There are still movies like that. Believe it or not. I know that my daughter actually enjoyed the Star Wars prequels better then the original trilogy. I think age jades our view of some things and allows us to look at others through rose colored glasses. That is what Millar has done here. He has created that rose colored world. Too bad I have a suspicion it will get very dark before it ends.

There is a foreboding here. You know that something is not right and that this will not end well. I won’t go into too much detail. Believe it or not, I got into reviewing to praise books without spoiling them. You can talk about how good something is without spoiling it. Just know that you know big things are around the corner not only on the last page but starting about half way through, when Millar gets to the gist of the story as opposed to the great characterization that is done in the beginning. It is a nice synthesis of set up and plot movement.

Tommy Lee Edwards is a rising super star. Somehow he has managed to work with some of the greatest writers out there. He did The Question with Rick Veitch which was my first exposure to his work and last year he did the long form what if story known as Bullet Points with another love him or hate him writer, John Michael Straczynski. He also does work for the official Star Wars stuff. I’m not too familiar with his history, although he hangs out with an impressive group of artists including Sean Chen, John Paul Leon, Bernard Chang, Trevor Goring. Together they are a collective known as the BLVD.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that Tommy is a friend. He is a customer at the Chapel Hill location of Ultimate Comics. He is a busy guy, but you can tell when he is working on a book. He will come into the shop a little more often, asking to see good reference pics for this character or that. It is one of the things that brings his art to life. While some artists like to outright swipe images, Tommy is inspired by them and it allows him to bring that life like quality to his art. I’ll say that there is a character in the book that bears a striking resemblance to himself. There is even a character that bears a striking resemblance to someone very close to me. All I can really say is remember my day job.

This allows him to bring that life to his work. He is a student of form and reality. This is what makes his work so striking and what allows this book to seem so real beyond its dialogue.

1985 is a pretty cool book, made by some pretty cool guys. You should probably check it out if you want to reminisce about how you felt as a kid reading comics.