Reviewer: Tim Stevens
Story Title: Threads
This book is weird.
Studio audience: How WEIRD is it?
It’s so weird that…actually, I don’t think I really wanna play this game.
Studio audience: Awwwwwwwwww
Fine. Fine. It’s so weird that it makes your parents’ relationship seem normal.
Uproarious applause and laughter
Yes. Thank you. Thank you.
This introduction brought to you by my original incredibly awkward opening.
The thing is, bad joke or not, it’s true (well, not the part about your parents…I’m sure they go on just fine). Breach is odd duck of a book, there’s no two ways about it.
This is a book who’s art eschews the bombastic explosions of super beings going head to head (although it does do that well too) for the subtle disturbing creepiness of a villain with a head so oversized it should be comical, but somehow is not. The villain in question is the Herdsman, a figure who moves and has the appearance of an oil spill give (relatively) human form. Each limb seems to contort as if independent of the whole. The protagonist, Major Zanetti, while granted a more ordinary humanoid form and features, is nearly always a blank slate. Only in rage does it appear that this “hero” is capable of facial expression.
This is a book that proves that while there may be no second acts in American life, there must certainly is in the comic book industry. Bob Harras was responsible for a laundry list of sins during his time writing and editing at Marvel (the creative strangling/constant bloating of the X-books that we still contend with today, The Crossing, etc). I don’t know who that Harras was then or who this one is now, but they do not share much in their approach to comics. Possibly the most skewed book the shelves to identify itself as a superhero title that’s not written by Grant Morrison, I can fully imagine Marvel era Harras firing Breach Harris in a heartbeat.
But does weird equal good? Not necessarily, not always.
The creep factor that arises out of the weirdness of this book is to its advantage, certainly. Between the Herdsman, the Writer, and the Woman with her hair in her face (who I want to say is Talia Head, but I can’t recall why), a reading of this issue does leave my skin crawling a bit. However, sometimes the book presses the creep factor until it buckles and that’s the case this issue with the introduction of the Herdsman’s brothers. Or particular note is the catlike creature who is supposed to be the most frightening but instead comes across as a giant version of those hairless felines. Certainly not what I’d like as a pet, but still not all that terror inducing.
On the other hand, these excesses are often combated by genuinely quality characterization. Zanetti, as eluded to above, is a generally cold individual prone to outbursts of anger and something else (shame?) at a predicament that leaves with the “gift” to kill with a touch and a set of powers that are slowly erasing his humanity every time he taps into them. He can genuinely concerned for the lives of others one moment (see his battle with the JLA a few issue back or his last minute abortion of a mission that would have put US Soldiers face to face with the Herdsman in this story) and utterly manipulative of them the next. He is a hero that, if not for his over powerfulness, would have fit quite comfortably with the heroes of Stan Lee era Marvel (yes, that’s a compliment).
However, the book does often trip over it self in this arena as well. With the exception of the two doctors who are assigned to Zanetti, the military is portrayed as made up of hot heads (witness _____ going off this issue) or the dangerously corrupt (Zanetti’s former best friend Mac). In a book that takes the time to give us a genuinely tragic hero, why cut corners and give us a military industrial complex so generic it could be dropped into any film, TV show, comic, or book without really altering the plotline of the piece?
