NYX: No Way Home #1 (of 6)
Written by: Marjorie Liu
Art by: Kalman Andrasofszky
A few years back when I started reading comics again, I walked into a comic shop and started checking the new releases. There were you Batmen, your Supermen, X-Men, etc. Standard shop, standard fare, and then I saw something that I just couldn’t resist staring at and soon buying.
I’d never heard of Josh Middleton, but I knew full well who Joey Q was (and yes, I will always call him Joey Q). The cover was astonishing to me, I mean, I spent a year of high school hanging out with the ‘raver-babies’ and going to parties, so the look on Kiden’s face was nothing new to me. But to see it so beautifully rendered inside the book?
NYX was a guilty pleasure book of mine for it’s first four issues. Intriguing characters, fun writing, gorgeous art, it was one of my most anticipated books. Then came the delays, the delays that killed this wonderful little book. Middleton actually quit Marvel and signed a DC exclusive because of them, that should tell you a lot. The book did eventually wrap up, but it was never the same again. The heart and soul had been ripped out and the new artist was trying far too hard to emulate a style that was so distinctly somebody else’s that it just fell flat.
NYX ended after seven issues, not with a bang, but with a whimper. By the time the last issue came out, nobody cared anymore. I’d actually forgotten entirely about this book that I had loved so much, only buying the last few issues because they were on my pull list at my local shop.
News came a few months ago that the book was coming back though, a six issue mini with a new creative team that I’d never heard of.I was wary, very wary. When I got to my comic shop last Wednesday I picked the issue up with not just a small amount of hesitation. I scanned the first few pages with fear of what it would look like, and five minutes later I was walking out of the door with the book in hand.
NYX is back, and it’s in capable hands.
The first thing I noticed as I read through the book was the art, and after how much the original volume crutched on it’s art, it wasn’t hard to do. Andrasofszky (whose name is copied to my clipboard) has the makings of a star artist, mark my words. I hadn’t realized until I started my research for the review that I actually own quite a bit of work he’s done, as he was the cover artist for the Ion series that came out of Infinite Crisis, as well as for a few issues of Checkmate. Anyway, his portrayals of the stars of the series are incredibly well done, and never at any point while reading this book did I have trouble believing that Kiden was only sixteen years old. His kids are kids, his adults are adults.
At no point in this issue did I find any true fault with the art, and I’m generally pretty anal about it. Yet here I was, hooked, able to put it out of my mind for the entirety of the issue that I was enjoying NYX and Josh Middleton had nothing to do with it. Kalman Andrasofszky will never be Josh Middleton, but that isn’t a bad thing by any means. He’s his own man, and his art reflects that. He makes no attempts at conforming to the original series artist, he just stamps his own signature style on the product and….well, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Gorgeous
About now you’re probably wanting me to stop gushing over the art and dig into the writing. Does it hold up to the work Joey Q did on the original book? Do these characters feel right?
Marjorie Liu isn’t Joey Q, and never will be, but she manages to characterize the cast in a way that I immediately felt in touch with them. Again, the kids feel like kids. That’s incredibly rare in the world of comics these days, where Tim Drake feels like he’s older then I am half of the time, it’s always refreshing to see a sixteen year old that acts sixteen.
The book has featured an obvious, and needed, time jump from the end of the last series. There are no mentions at all about X-23 or Zebra Daddy, but the rest is there. Kiden reflects back her own personal history in a single page recap, Ms. Palmer cracks a dark joke about being shot in the previous series, and Tatiana has a spaz out about her issue with the Purifiers. Liu did her homework, obviously, and it pays off. Bobby and Lil’ Bro are a highlight to me, as she manages to convey the dynamic between this hardened older brother, one who’s done things he isn’t proud of, and his autistic little brother that’s completely trapped inside of his own head.
The issue moves about somewhat slowly, spending the majority of it’s pages working to develop who these characters are and where they are in their lives, and it’s not a set up you’ll see me complain about. We even get to see the return of the ghost of Kiden’s dad!
The book actually opens on a cliffhanger and ends on a completely different one, a very nice touch.
So what’s the final verdict on NYX: No Way Home? It’s a strong start to the mini-series, and one that I feel will do justice by the fans of the old book. And if you’ve never read or heard of NYX before? Give it a shot, who knows, you might learn to love Kiden and her friends as much as I do.
7/10
