4 out of 5

A general path is to be borne into Marvel / DC – it’s the most readily accessible stuff – and then wander out into the indie ether.  It becomes hard to go back once you’ve gotten the taste; the superhero soap is something you have to be committed to, and casual perusals only underline its inherent cheesy dramatics.  And as a judgmental bastard, whenever I see articles extolling the virtues of whatever Big Two book, I raise an inquisitive brow, having sampled a particular writer or artist: people’s standards as to quality writing or art are puzzling.  And then I remember I consider a lot of best selling authors crap also.  Ah, opinions.

So when you wander across that rare creative who actually has the ability to craft an effective, and well-made tale featuring a superstar in a cape, it can be quite a surprise: even dudes I consider mega talented struggle when trying to find their “in” to Supes and Spidey.

John Arcudi, ladies and gents: the man has a way with making the complex dazzlingly simple.  Witness his years of sprawling Hellboy / BPRD plots, often wrangled down to madly impactful 3-5 issue mini-series.  Or he can do manic stuff in The Mask, or he can do serious pulp in The Creep.  Sure, just like anyone, he has his ons and offs, but unlike anyone, often those offs are worthwhile in some regard, if only to add further insight to his many-faceted skills.

So witness also John taking on a character that’s way too easy to stereotype or generify: Luke Cage.  Taking him ‘back to his roots’ should be a forehead-slapping, poorly-scribed attempt at grounding the character, but no: John does just that in three issues, and even manages to, within comic context, realistically tackle a drug problem in Philadelphia.  It’s insane: most of the time, movies and shows will take an easy out when they upset some drug distribution chain, and make a point about how it’s a cycle that never stops and etcetera, but Arcudi instead uses a request from an old Harlem friend to bring Cage out to Philly, knock out some thugs, and explore those ‘roots’ in terms of… what keeps Cage rooted.  He ties story and character together, and even inserts a lot of action and tiger attacks.  The world keeps spinning, but Cage does a piece of good and then continues the good fight back in New York.  While it would’ve been nice to explore this in terms of his family of Jessica and his child a bit more, it’s still a knock out of the park for a three issue take on a character.  And color me also surprised regarding the stylized art of Eric Canete: most guys in this exacerbated style rub me the wrong way, but Canete has a touch of Genndy Tartakovsky in his mannerisms, tempered with a keen understanding of panel dynamics such that I never felt at a loss to see / feel what was going on.

Also collected is a one-shot by Antony Johnston and Sean Chen which has Cage boxing DD for charity.  Johnston is a solid writer and it’s a solid tale, cutely given conflict by having Turk bet on the tussle.

Also also collected is a short by a Daily Show guy, and like most cross-media comic stuff, it’s pretty dumb, too eager to drop some political winks on us.