| Jupiter’s Legacy #5 |
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| Monday, 19 January 2015 13:59 |
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Eight months! Compared to the record hiatuses of Astro City or Jonathan Hickman's S.H.I.E.L.D., that's nothing, but it does beg the question of what Millar and Quitely have been up to all that time. After all, as the back covers of this series boast, this is "the greatest superhero epic of this generation." The downside of enduring that stretch of time between issues is expecting more from what you get, no matter how good it actually is.That's a pity, because Millar goes pretty big throughout this issue, starting with the brief but dramatic chase of Skyscraper, a size-changing supervillain forced out of hiding by Major Barnabas Wolfe (once known as Molecule Master). Millar knows very well the impact of a colossus doing anything; remember, this is the same man who killed Goliath in Marvel's Civil War. Watching Skyscraper, in giant mode, helplessly struggling against her bonds and taking up a big chunk of downtown Melbourne doing it, visually tells you the massive stakes Millar's playing with here.If anything gives truth to the series' "epic" claims, it's the casual way Chloe and Jason treat their astounding array of powers. Their debate about doing the right thing versus self-preservation runs through all the usual points, but the fact that it takes place on the moon gives the conversation its grandeur. There they are, breathing and speaking in a vacuum after a twenty-minute lunar flight, yet these feats don't register in their conversation at all. It's just a mother embracing and loving her son as hard as she possibly can.That's one of the more pleasant surprises of Jupiter's Legacy: how well-adjusted and bonded a family unit Hutch, Chloe, and Jason are, in spite of the circumstances. It's a marked contrast to the dysfunction that doomed Sheldon and Grace and damned Brandon, and you have to think the whole hiding out thing has a lot to do with it. Constantly keeping their powers hidden, living completely ordinary lives, all for that most universally human of goals—keeping their family safe—has a humbling effect, and an empowering one. For all her powers, Chloe was just another wrecked party girl when she was aimlessly living it up on the back of advertising contracts. But as a mother, she's nothing but focused, competent, and powerful, especially when Wolfe endangers her son. Never has "Mommy hears everything" sounded so badass.Chloe's motherly instincts, like Jason's altruistic compulsions, may be simple-minded, but they also allow her to act with total confidence that she's doing the right thing. Compare her to Brandon and even Walter, who only think they know what they're doing. Last issue showed us that despite patricide and political shadiness, America and the world at large are worse off than they started. This borderline dystopia is post-mortem evidence supporting Samson's refusal to step in and solve the world's problems himself. These kinds of challenges make even supervillains like Skyscraper seem small, so when you let a superhero take a crack at them, you're going to end up with more damage than a human roadblock in Melbourne. Case in point: Walter hovering above a devastated part of San Francisco, the result of an "experiment" to stop the country's oil dependency. He may be a genius, but he's not infallible, a clear fact he either doesn't recognize or, worse, doesn't care about.Quitely gets to do two of the things he excels at in this issue: spectacular staging and powerful action sequences. Between Skyscraper's gargantuan body lying between a bunch of buildings like they're children's playhouses, and Chloe and Jason's romp in a moon crater, within view of a pearlescent Earth, Jupiter's Legacy achieves a true larger-than-life quality that usually only movies can capture. As for the action, Quitely's got this in the bag. This is an artist who can convey the speed and force of Jason blasting out the back of his school bus without even including Jason in the panel. When Chloe confronts Wolfe and his goons, you can feel the bone-breaking impact of every one of her telekinetically propelled bricks. Quitely knows his physics, which pays dividends when he's drawing them.Some Musings: - I appreciate that Jason's little gal friend is named Lola, in the vein of Clark Kent's Lana and Lois.The post Jupiter’s Legacy #5 appeared first on Weekly Comic Book Review. Read more: http://weeklycomicbookreview.com/2015/01/19/jupiters-legacy-5/ |
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