| Captain Marvel #11 |
 |
 |
 |
| Saturday, 17 January 2015 12:37 |
|
I'm glad there's sappy, feel-good holiday stories. I get to live vicariously through them and thus maintain my naturally scroogey disposition. WIth this issue, it's Captain Marvel's turn to be the kind of stalwart paragon of heroism for the holidays-- which means she gets to display selfless sacrifice, tenacity, and strike a dramatic pose alongside Santa Claus.
I kid, but this issue had a feel-good tone throughout, even with some sad and poignant moments. It's set with the opening page narration, which contains some very poetic musings about the holidays with a touch of humor, too. And illustrating the caption's description of "beautiful," the art dutifully delivers. The opening page splash has a dramatic three-point angled perspective, and the subsequent pages are rendered equally lavishly. Credit Loughridge's colors/effects, too, as the reflections on the street wonderfully convey the wet texture, and the snowflakes are appropriately soft and billowy.
David Lopez is as expressive as ever in his art, capturing the necessary expressions to heighten each panel's needed emotion. This is especially important with the key scenes of Captain Marvel visiting her friend in the hospital. Particularly noteworthy was the artistic way of displaying Marvel falling victim to the villain's sleep-gas attack, with the panels repeating and then degenerating, floating/falling into the transition to the next scene.
The art is not without its fault, however. The battle scene is quick, but there are some visual shortcuts that simply don't work. When Captain Marvel swoops over to kick a microscope, the panels break a 180 degree rule, momentarily losing the flow between the sequence by requiring the eyes adjust a bit to register what's happening. Later, I'm not quite sure how a blurred foot makes "tush tush tush" sounds to cause fire sprinklers to explode. At one point, June Covington grabs an axe from a wall that wasn't anywhere near her the way the room was laid out. Thankfully, the strengths of Lopez/Loughridge can always outweigh such minor confusing details, providing they are far between.
As for the story, the biggest fault would be in the suddenly deus-ex-machina way Santa Claus becomes a real player in the story. Were we readers expected to ignore such a plot hole and just shrug our shoulders and say "Eh! It's Christmas!"? Because, frankly, it makes no sense. It's not improved much by having Captain Marvel save the victim by an illogical yet completely convenient fall of a knife, nor by showing her unfazed and completely accepting a mall Santa's transformation into the literal embodiment of the spirit of the holidays. Maybe all Marvel heroes have co-starred with St. Nick in some untold story of Santa Claus Team-Up, so when he pops into a December (er, January?) issue, the heroes are just all "oh, hey, Kris. Is it that time of year already?"
The post Captain Marvel #11 appeared first on Weekly Comic Book Review. Read more: http://weeklycomicbookreview.com/2015/01/17/captain-marvel-11/ |
|
PULL LIST STATISTICS
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Latest News
�
09/10/10:Comic Archive now allows pick list generation • • 09/07/10:Our Weekly Comic Book Archive is now operational • • 09/05/10:Website Rewritten and Redesigned