Reviewer: James Hatton
Story Title: The Deconstruction of Mark Milton
Writer: J. Michael Straczynski
Pencils: Gary Frank
inks: Jon Sibal with Mark Morales
Colors: Chris Sotomayor
Letterer: VC’s Dave Sharpe
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Welcome to Spin Alley. The place where what you saw and what you heard are changed around so that when tomorrow on the 6 o’clock, we hear what is necessary to adhere to any number of factors. It could possibly be a government need to invoke an emotion, or possibly even complete white-out on a topic that would cause more problems than it’s worth.
Does that really happen? Ask any guy who wears a tinfoil hat, and he’ll tell you “NO! STOP MAKING THE MUFFINS TALK TO ME!!!” – but ask someone with some sense of paranoia about the world around them, and they will probably assume that’s how it works.
In the world of Supreme Power, that’s exactly how it works.
STORY!
Hyperion and Speedster have taken down a vicious killer. That’s a good thing. The government is not happy that they’ve lost their golden boy in Hyperion, so it’s time to take this great thing he did and spin it into something that they can use.
Photographic evidence shows that Hyperion is throwing cars around. It doesn’t show Speedster since he’s faster than a camera click, and it conveniently shows not a single shot of the murderer. The Colonel has made a brick wall that, if done properly, is going to put Hyperion up against the people that love him – the United States.
All of this is told while we watch the Colonel and his granddaughter take a part a clock. An apt metaphor, as page by page the time piece is taken apart, the Colonel slowly but surely makes sure that there is nothing that Hyperion can turn to. He even finds the perfect way to handle Speedster, who out of evSery character in this book, has the most redeemable qualities.
Where last issue was about the torture and rebuilding of a killer – this issue is about the deconstruction of a hero.
Oh, and Fishgirl is about to head on out of the water with Doctor Spectrum – more on that next issue.
ART!
There is something exceptional about Gary Frank. I’ve seen many artists who draw in an attempt to do what he does perfectly. His faces look perfect, and the emotion that they convey is as easy to read as the text. Where someone without skill might use too many lines and make every character look and feel old, Frank chooses the lines carefully in everything.
Through the last three issues he’s given us a huge super-powered fight scene, the torture of a serial killer, and the politically posturing of a Colonel. All of them convey very different emotions, but in the hands of someone lesser they wouldn’t feel as powerful, or creepy, or devious.
OVERALL!
There was a short period after the first arc where I felt that JMS wasn’t sure where he was going to move with this book. It felt as if everything was happening so slowly, but now as each issue tells us another angle from which this story is spun – the web grows as it should. One of the things I’ve come to love about JMS is his ability to take so many interweaving sub-plots and find a way to make their harmonious. I have no idea how Fishgirl is going to react to Power Princess – or how the Nighthawk is going to accept working for the ‘Man’.
These subplots have already been threaded together, it’s just a matter of JMS and Frank to walk down the strands.
