2 out of 5

I’m… not a big fan of stories like Feathers.  Part of what I would consider this tale’s failings could be blamed on it being writer / artists Corona’s first bid (I believe) at wearing all the creative hats, but that hasn’t stopped plenty of others from turning in stellar debut works.  Plus, Corona isn’t completely new to the biz, and the cliches that riddle his dialogue and structure should’ve been weaned out by that experience.  However, more noxious (as I always caution: to me), and my main reason for dislike, is that Feathers is written from the outside in.  It’s a self justifying story.  Each piece only exists to prop up another piece.  We have two omniscient narrators who bookened the story, discussing the effect the events we read might have; we have a boy – Poe – born covered in feathers; we have a gaggle of parentless children referred to as ‘mice’ who live in the slums, called The Maze; we have a Kingish / Queenish leadership who rule the walled off, pristine ‘City’; we have a goddess called The Guide who protects the city and a mean-old Shadow who kidnaps kids in The Maze.  And the way Corona sets out to explain any given element is by leaning it against another one.  A exists because of B because of C because of D and so on.  What this generally means… via my haughty assumptions, anyway… is that Corona drew a sketch of a boy covered in Feathers and thought “cool” and then thought it’d be cooler if he was sort of a secret savior of some kids.  Why kids?  Oh, um, because they have no parents, and need assistance in their struggles to survive and thwart the parents-that-are-not-their-own.  But where do those parents come from?  Oh, they live in a walled off city; the kids live on the street…  …And so on.

I recently reviewed Kurt Busiek’s Autumnlands, which is a mean comparison since Kurt’s been world-building for years, but all the same, I bring it up as an example of better construction.  The seed may be the same: you want to write a story about X (a boy covered in Feathers) and it will be themed around Y (be yerself, blah de blah); in Autumnlands, X might be a bull terrier named Dusty and Y might be a study on social dynamics, but it doesn’t exactly matter except to suggest that, of course, the story has to start somewhere.  But over the 6 first-arc issues, Kurt doesn’t waste our time trying to justify everything.  He absolutely built his world but then has confidence that it can survive without having to explain it to his audience.  So he can focus on something happening within his world.  Not only is this 100% more immersive, but it actually also sneakily allows for little explanations to work their way in without having to paint them red and babble them at the reader like a hyperactive two year old explaining his fever-dream.

Am I being overly harsh?  Probably, considering I gave the story two stars.  I mean, Feathers looks fun – Jorge’s got a nice, clean animated style, with a good sense of framing – and colorist Jen Hickman manages to make the book feel bright despite it mostly taking place in shadowy alleys.  I’m not completely sold on letterer Deron Bennett, who stacks bubbles unreasonably in spots – I get that it’s when characters are talking over each other, but Bennett leaves so much space around the words that it doesn’t seem necessary – but the bubbles themselves have an interesting hand-drawn looking border that’s a good fit for the book’s tone.  And, sure, Corona has written what amounts to a predictable Disney flick (good guy emerges after accepting responsibility; parents learn to love children; a ‘twist’ reveals the ‘true villain’ toward the end) and the construction is marred by the frustrations listed above – plus, ahem, exposition dumps, though even ‘pros’ like Bendis do that shit so I guess that gets more of a pass – but the concept, all my complaining aside, definitely speaks of an inventive mind, I just wish it wasn’t presented in such a way as to expose its outside-in transparency.

On a last note, and not really a spoiler so much as a warning: don’t expect any conclusions here, as Feathers is seemingly set up for another series to explain away some leading questions Corona leaves us with.  Yes, this affected the rating because… dude, resolve something.