4 out of 5

Gordon Rennie’s and Duke Mighten’s Fighting American update punches out reds and then barrels its way… right into our hearts.  Awww.

Okay, not really.  There’s no wistful, nostalgia-soaked subtext here (thank gawd), moreso – much moreso – a smart retooling of a billion and one tropes into an exciting and fast-paced four issue adventure.  Rennie proves once again how adept he is at tossing the reader right into world-built context without it ever feeling like we’re skipping beats, and the art team of Duke Mighten and Tracy Bailey on colors (with PC de la Fuente taking up some pages later on) paint that world in bright, limber, Kirby-winking but wholly original majesty, characters and exacerbated actions leaping off the page… where appropriate.  Because the trick, here – that I frankly can’t fathom how it was so well pulled off – is that Fighting American somehow has its yuks being an oddball Captain America riff (a brother is killed for his outspoken statements against the commies; “science” implants the other brother into dead brother’s body and super-heroes him) while also remaining respectful of that inspiration; it does the expected fish out of water gag by having FA and sidekick Speedboy travel through time to 2017 to track a villain, and yet never rests on the laurels of that gag; it plays loosey-goosey with logic in the fashion of a comedy strip, but mixes in legit stakes and internal logic, like a well-considered sci-fi tale.  In other words: we have our parody cake but get to eat our action sci-fi cake too.

That accomplishment expressed, there are some other tantalizing desserts on display (to stick with that metaphor…) that feel like window dressing: the viciousness of our bad guy is introduced but nothing much comes of it; a bad guy “twist” is both great and unremarkable; and Rennie introduces some consequence regarding a 1950s hero suddenly appearing and operating on modern NY streets and then backpedals it when an FBI agent steps in and tells everyone it’s okay.  This is all handled slickly, and it’s very, very possible these are elements to deal with in future issues – and admittedly, by not getting bogged down with this, the tone can remain buoyantly joyful – but there’s still the slight hiccup of realizing that our first arc is going to wrap up pretty simply.

…And I hate knocking a rating due ti art, but Duke Mighten’s fill-in, de la Fuente, does a great Mighten impression, but their pages simply aren’t as dynamic or flush: personalities are a skosh off and backgrounds feel empty.  Mighten had been out of the comics game for a while, and his work on the book is pretty dense, so it’s understandable that Titan arranged for someone to effectively mimic his style to keep a publishing schedule, but it’s still a bump in the road when PC takes over the majority of the art by issue 4.

These are definitely two very minor zings, and really only stick out because of how great the book is overall.  I would love to see Rennie on an ongoing title outside of 2000 AD, and if he can continue this quality with Fighting American, it should prove to be quite the outlet for just that.