Reviews: Pixie Strikes Back #4 & Atomic Robo v4.3
One more day of dual reviews to try to finish playing catch-up. We've now seen the action-packed - if a bit helter skelter - conclusion of Pixie Strikes Back and Atomic Robo nears the end of its episodic fourth volume. I've really enjoyed both these books, but both of them left me scratching my head a little.
Read on for more!
Pixie Strikes Back #4: I originally bought this book's first issue in hopes it would be something light and fluffy to counteract Blackest Night and instead I got hallucinations, teen angst, demons and Emma Frost. C'est la vie. It's turned out to be a great book and I am extremely pleased that the final issue does provide a full resolution and some serious narrative development for the title character. The action sequences aren't exactly linear and fluid, instead constructed as a sort of montage or tableau, with plenty of dialogue over snapshots of the action in a given split-second of time. This isn't really an action book, though, and rather than seeming like some failure to illustrate the big fight it serves to reinforce that this book isn't about the big fight. Instead, this is a book that concerns itself with intrigue and craft and rivalries and secrets. I said to my partner that I enjoyed it but I wasn't sure I completely understood it and he said, "Honey, I don't think it was written for you."
That's quite true. I read once that there are no relationships as intense or as opaque to outsiders as those between young women and in a lot of ways this issue is a reinforcement of that. The relationships between the four young women who were held captive seem... well, I don't know what to make of them: rivalry, friendship, jealousy, judgment, support, respect and admiration rolled into one? The rapid shifting between attitudes towards Pixie by those who were taken hostage using her power is understandable and at the same time a little mystifying. That said, heavens but it's nice to read a book in which women solve their own problems. By the time the cavalry arrives they're actually in the way. I had been building up quite a head of steam on a preconception that the boys were going to save the girls and I would be pissed and it doesn't go down like that at all. Kudos. Enjoyable, and it makes me wish I had a niece to whom I could recommend it even if I didn't entirely understand it myself. It suffers from the same problem that seems to plague every mini-series with a single plot - a final issue that tries to cram into its one issue the tail end of build-up, the entirety of the conflict resolution, the denouement and the requisite hint of future story arcs - but I'm not sure anyone has solved that problem just yet.
Atomic Robo v4.3: Brian Clevinger's specialty as a writer is snappy dialogue - timing is a strong second - but the wordplay in this one seemed to jump around just a little too much for me. I liked the character of the villain but I felt like I was having to do more work than usual to connect the dots of dialogue to come up with full exchanges that scanned. I know, I know, woe is me, a comic made me think; add in that my usual complaint is that comedy isn't demanding enough and I start to sound like I don't really like what I like, don't I? Still, it was a little scattershot and something in the character of Robo himself seemed a little bitter or perhaps more cynical than I'm used to reading. It's definitely a ripping yarn, though, and Clevinger's magic touch with comedic timing is if anything even more precise than usual.
The art in this book practically sings the story, lending a life to the characters that isn't easy to find. Most comics artists are restricted to angst, more angst and surprise; this book's script provides the opportunity for humor, inventiveness and madness, a refreshing change from the usual cloying perfume of overwrought melodrama. Environments are stripped down to their essentials, perhaps unintentionally evoking the bare sets of old c-grade sci-fi movies, but faces and expressions are alive and inspired. I'll be sad to see this volume end, sure, but I have a feeling that it - like The Tick - is better for the creativity allowed by the time between issues and I can accept that.
Klarion
Posted to Review on 14 June 2010
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Other stuff like this: Atomic Robo, Brian Clevinger, Kathryn Immonen, Pixie, Young X-Men
Oh my god, I've been an Atomic Robo fan for a while now, and this one really left be rolling. There was a "free comic day" issue that had this scaley fellow in it and I'd wished that there was more... and here there is!
Crysssstals! Hilarious.