Reviewer: Tim Byrne
Story Title: N-Zone (Part one of six)
Written by: Warren Ellis
Penciled by: Adam Kubert
Inked by: John Dell
Colored by: Dave Stewart
Lettered by: Chris Eliopoulos
Editor: Ralph Macchio
Publisher: Marvel Comics
The buzz-word of the last few years in comics has been the idea of ‘de-compressed’ storytelling. This can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but my definition is that in the same amount of pages, less things ‘happen’ in an action sense, but the descriptions and depictions of those things (and the workings of the characters’ minds) are more detailed.
Now, like almost every other storytelling technique, in the hands of a gifted writing team, this can work wonderfully. In the hands of a couple of hacks, the results can be more ugly. Ellis and Kubert are certainly not hacks. Their run on Ultimate Fantastic Four has been interesting and humourous, with some fascinating psuedo-science regarding the mutations that Lee/Kirby spent around 30 seconds coming up with back in the day.
However, its taken 12 issues to have essentially an origin story, a battle with the Mole-Man and the first encounter of the heroes with Doctor Doom. That’s about 10.5 months of comics for not a huge sense of much happening.
So, with that lengthy introduction out of the way, let’s get to the meat of today’s review. Part one of the ‘N-Zone’ story is really just more of the same. Some interesting writing, some interesting characterisation (particularly the relationships between Sue and Reed, and Johnny and Ben) and some impressive pseudo-science.
The chuckles were also dead-on, especially with Ben’s dead-on cynical and self-deprecating humour throughout the issue.
BUT NOTHING IS HAPPENING!!
(Spoiler) All that really happens is that Reed continues to experiment on the N-Zone, and at the end determines that he has found a technique that might mean people can go through there. That should be 1/4 to 1/3 of an issue, not an issue, regardless of the story-telling quality.
Any way, the issue is well-written, with that caveat.
Kubert’s art is, as always, impressive. I particularly love the look of Ben, with his granite skin positively oozing toughness and a ‘hard’ qualitiy, nicely counterposed with his eyes. Also check out the Easter Egg of the doctor’s clipboard on page two.
I’ll keep coming back, hoping that more will have happened by this time next year.
