4 out of 5

The print version of the Thrillbent digital original.  Following my “review it by the trade collections” format, I should split this into 1 -4 and 5 – 8, but that’s incredibly balls on the TPB people because there’s not a full story arc like that.  It’s also 19.99, which is double balls since the issues are 4 bucks.  Here’s to extras…

Anyhow, who’s reviewing trades?  We’re here to talk about the floppies, man, and let’s just discuss up front how the digital translation worked: …pretty well.  Like the other Thrillbent translation (over at Dynamite), Charlie Wormwood, the repeated panels with swapped out dialogue or fades added to the background are pretty good giveaways of the original format, but otherwise, the job done to excise transitional panels and shrink this to the right size are admirable; the copy-and-paste concept isn’t limited to digital, obviously, so unless you come into this expecting the webcomic footprint, you might have no idea, just noting some surprisingly “lazy” moments from what’s otherwise, for all intents and purposes, a high-budget lookin’ comic: Krause  and colorist Nolan Woodard deliver some great work here, with Krause’s balance between shadow-heavy noir realism and big and bold pose-for-the-camera hero character models truly at home in the slightly larger than life St. Barrington setting.  His habit to also only draw characters that either look serious, obnoxious or dumbfounded is served by a story that requires just those three emotions.  Woodard’s muted but robust tones also really help to embolden those points where Krause’s work – due to his heavy inks – can sometimes look sloppy.

Regarding the story, it pays to consider what Waid’s strength is: having fun.  In a way, he’s a modern day Gerber, able to pop in to titles and maintain what’s good while reinvigorating the whole thing; while Steve’s randomness would then take over to push the title(s) into unpredictable directions, Waid tends to revel in the predictability of the medium, while being aware enough to toss some twists our way.  Playing within the majors, I’ve sort of fallen out of favor with his books (like Daredevil), because despite the energy he injects into them, it almost makes the unchanging nature of those worlds all the more apparent.  On indie titles, it’s a mixed bag: his other “In-” books (Irredeemable, Incorruptible) and Empire and the like have a similar seed as Insufferable – taking a trope and flipping it – but those books seemed rather intent on pushing into the realm of shock, the stakes of which didn’t grab me because it was Idea Over Characters, and so I had no reason to care.  This title, though, is almost purposefully more humble, and though it’s still a flipped trope (the dynamic duo hate each other), it definitely requires the characters to work, and Waid knows that.  He still works his Marky Mark magic of wending in a larger story – namely a mystery involving the duo’s deceased mother and a back catalogue of rogues teaming up once more – but he plays it pretty honestly; once you’ve accepted that Mark is more on the side of the elder superhero here – Nocturnus, father of the petulant Galahad, who has gone out on his own to cash in on tweets and product endorsements – you see he’s not trying to catch us out so much with the last minute rescues (you know Nocturnus has it in hand), but rather using the whole setup to play out a family drama.

And it’s fun.  There is a bit of a “that’s it?” to the central mystery, which was inevitable, and things get a tad heavy-handed to explain the moral to us, but it’s fun.  And freed of having to sell print copies or the limitations of a major publisher’s property, the title gets to proceed at its own desired pace and scale, which makes it one of the most balanced and consistently fun things Waid has written yet.  I wish I was a digital reader so I could support Thrillbent directly, but I do pledge to continue to pick up the paper versions and I hope that results in the same support.