Broken Frontier

What if Nostradamus was right? What if there was a secret organization designed to oversee his prophecies and guide the world?

Writer John Rozum takes a little bit of mysticism and combines it with cloak and dagger to create The Foundation. Is this something new under the sun or just more of the same? I predict…..

This is the mysterious Valentine’s world…working for a shadowy organization set up to administer the prophesies of Nostradamus. On this day he must stop one man from boarding a plane but what happens to the others who get on board? Is all life plotted out on a grid or is there still room for destiny? Valentine chases all these questions as he ponders his own role in this. Is he a hand of fate or merely a pawn on a chessboard?

While The Foundation has an interesting premise Rozum makes rather a misstep in this first issue. Nearly the entire comic is an internal monologue from the Foundation Agent Valentine and his own angst-filled wonderings become rather tiring quickly. There is also very little sense of tension as readers already know (perhaps like Nostradamus) what is going to happen all within the first few pages of the comic. There is no feeling of danger and no real urgency. Also, while there are other agents involved in this mission with Valentine, he is the only one we are allowed to meet – robbing the comic of the chance to break-up Valentine’s questioning with other viewpoints. The other problem Rozum runs into here is that he takes away all the mystery here in the first issue. Readers get a pretty good idea of who and what the Foundation is and what Valentine’s mission is. It would have added to the story if readers had been left a bit more in the dark about Valentine’s mission and motives.

The artwork by Chee is solid but his figures seem static. There is a slight lack of motion here, as if the panels were just that – panels, rather than frames of film. Also, with the exception of the two main figures – Valentine and his "victim" – the faces of the others are not very expressive. There is some room for improvement here and hopefully readers will get a chance to see a bit more flow.

In the end, while The Foundation springs from a great idea it gets hampered by a story that removes all the mystery and all the sense of build-up. As a first issue, it is possible that the rest of the mini-series may do more to re-introduce a sense of the unknown but for now this is a case of knowing too much, too soon.