Another Solid Issue
This review originally went up on The Founding Fields, here.
“Intensely fun and engaging.” ~Shadowhawk, The Founding Fields
As much as I love comics from the Big 2, particularly DC, recent months have seen a big uptick in my consumption of comics from the independents, i.e publishers like Image, Top Cow, Valiant, IDW, Dark Horse and others. With all of its newly launched series, Image has definitely led the charge, providing readers like me with some really great reading choices. At the forefront of these new titles are Velvet and Black Science. Of the two, the former is a James Bond-esque story but with a female protagonist, quite different from the latter which is a pulp-ish time-traveling/dimension-traveling science fiction story. I love them both, and this week’s issue of Velvet really rammed home why this series is so damn good.
Quite simply, Ed Brubaker is a master of characterisation with the protagonist Velvet Templeton, a former field agent of ARC-7 and now the secretary to the chief of the agency. But in the wake of an agent’s murder, Velvet is forced to get back into the game, not quite by her own choice, and she’s been kicking ass for two issues now. The third issue does a lot to further her character and really make her more well-rounded. We’ve seem a lot of different sides to her previously and this time we get to see a more emotional, more sympathetic side, something that intelligence agents normally do their best to avoid, because of the complications they bring. And complications are exactly what Velvet gets in this issue!
From start to finish, Brubaker’s dialogue is right on point, as is the internal monologue from Velvet, which is often quite humorous and always entertaining as well. This is one of the main reasons why I find this series to be so good, so fascinating. Velvet is a character unlike any other in all the espionage fiction I’ve read, and while Brubaker does a lot to make her our to be unique in that respect, he also gives her some tried and true tools to get ahead. The primary thing however is that the execution is never crass. It is always thoughtful and incidental and respectful.
Writing-wise, there are two problems with this issue. The first is that Velvet’s supporting cast is rather bland. We’ve had some really interesting and promising characters show up but Brubaker hasn’t really done much with either of them. We see cameos here and there at most and that’s it, nothing more unfortunately. That’s really the biggest criticism I have of the series as whole. There’s only so far that velvet can go on her and she needs a recurring cast to help advance the plot when she’s not available, narratively.
The second problem is that the story is a bit too fast-paced and it needs to slow down a little so that reader isn’t so lost. There are some great twists here that keep things moving, but the problems with the pacing prevent this issue from being a stand-out issue in its own right.
On the art side of things, Steve Epting and Elizabeth Brietweiser turn out another great looking issue of the series. Their characters are pretty much realistic and without any kind of exaggeration. Their panels flow together extremely well and their visual storytelling is every bit the match for Ed Brubaker’s script. The dark scenes throughout really emphasise the Cold War-era intelligence missions feel that has been so popularised by James Bond. And so on and on. I really wanted to see more by the time I was done with the issue.
Overall, I’d say that this is a pretty damn solid issue of the series.
Rating: 9.5/10