2 out of 5

Mr. Van Lente got much deserved attention for his fun and fact-filled ‘Action Philosophers!’ books, and then after poking his pencil into various works here and there, he seemed to get a rise in comic credibility when working on ‘The Incredible Hercules.’  Soon enough, Fred’s name was showing up on a lot of books.  Having enjoyed AP (and Comic Book Comics) – and appreciating that it takes a pretty quick wit and inestimable skill to step through so much history so entertainingly (not to diminish the immense assist from artist Ryan DunLavey) – I was happy to see the author step onto the top shelves, and it’s generally fun when the indie-boys-made-good writers start on the non A-list books, since it gives them a bit of room to stretch their creative wings.

Fred has the same obsession with factoid minutiae that Brian Vaughan does, but unlike the latter, he enveloped it into his mythology fueled Hercules tale, as opposed to making the trivia quips a character quirk (the ‘Brian K. Vaughan male quipper’ role, or BKVMQr, of course).  I enjoyed this blending of ‘historical’ backing and comic pap, and the character Amadeus Cho gave Van Lente an outlet for experimenting with emotional tone in a book about a brawler.  But at some point, things fizzled out.  Inevitably, it was exposed to be a comic book after all, with relatively pointless hills and valleys leading to cosmic crossovers and Cho and Herc becoming two sides of a same-sided (wha…?) man-child smirks and smarts characterization.  The book was fun, and looked good, but was ultimately empty… which is the popcorn value of a lot of major books, for better or worse.

Brain Boy is another Amadeus Cho (snarky, haunted past, with telekinetic powers instead of Cho’s mathematical foresight), and Fred’s starting point for his series robs it of the ability to build much steam.  This first storyline is detail front-loaded to, I’m supposing, get to better arcs sooner, but despite trying to sidestep the effects of this upon a reader (e.g. not caring about what you’re reading because it’s just dropped on you and not developed) by starting issue #1 with a high-stakes ‘flash-forward’-ish panel (guns to the hero’s head, he’s tied to a chair, “I’ve got you right where I want you,” said with a  smirk), the wishy-washy nature of the “readers” – telepaths employed by the government, Brain Boy or Matt Price being one of these – and BB’s similarly wishy-washy personality (Fight for what’s right when it makes plotting easier! / I don’t care about what’s right when it makes plotting easier!) and a super unnecessarily wayward conspiracy tale all add up to a blase start.  Which is shame, as Fred put some pieces into play to shape Brain Boy’s world (namely the organization that ‘groomed’ him for the government) that sound like good story fodder – and perhaps, again, this is the meat this too-packed intro is trying to earn sales to get to –  and packaged ‘neath Ariel Olivetti’s amazing covers, which, to my eye harken back to the original BB painted covers (from the Dell books) in their odd mix of European professionalism and weirdness – you are actually excited to step into the book, which even the nifty design of the Hawkeye covers don’t really do for me.

So with all the knockin’ on Lente I’m doing, why did I buy the book?  Well, FVL is one of those writers for whom I’ve held on to hope… and since Brain Boy is a fresh property with an indie-er publisher with a slighty skewed premise that doesn’t necessitate big battles, it seemed like the best possibility for allowing the author to fulfill those hopes.  And it’s not a bad book, by any means, in the same way that Bendis isn’t a horrible writer, but it reads like a template, and doesn’t do anything directly interesting with the material.

On the art side of things, R. B. Silva’s angular characters and line-work give the book the same kind of fun, dynamic look that Hercules had (or Peter David’s ‘Spy-Boy’), but the paneling feels cluttered instead of helping to direct the eye (staggered paneling being all the rage lately, and few artists really using it effectively, I feel) and there appears to be only a coupe different character types – Brain Boy, and guy with facial hair, which is drawn like a mop attached to the several bearded character’s faces.  Then there’s Brain Boy with long hair, who is a girl.  Though some backgrounds exist, they feel like static filler (like movie sets).  However, my biggest problems come from the shading – whether that’s on Silva or inker Rob Lean – and the method of using boxes for Matt’s thoughts and thought bubbles for other character’s thoughts.  It seems that Silva doesn’t use much detail in his figures, so we get odd blocks of grey or black shadows dropped on everything to give them some depth.  This style works well on the larger images, but when we’re focusing on faces it looks horribly inhuman.  And regarding the narration, Van Lente uses a trick of “interrupting” Matt’s inner monologue at one point to show that there’s another reader around, which is meant to be a “shock,” but ends up just being confusing to read.  There are too many word bubble styles, essentially, rolled in too quickly.  As with the basic story, establishing a beat is necessary before shaking it up to be effective.

It might turn into something more stable down the road, and I bet it’ll get the chance, since VL certainly has his fans by now.  And it’s a breezy read that provides some good chuckles and concepts.  But I don’t think I’ll be returning.  Fred has already established the book’s tone, and it just doesn’t offer enough to get me to plop down an extra 3 bucks once a month.