I am a committed Marvel fanboy, so for me to read a Marvel book and consciously decide "Actually, this is crap, I'm not picking this up" takes a hell of a lot. America did that; issue one was unquestionably the worst comic book I have read in the last 5 years. You know those low-budget action movies that just race from one set-piece action sequence to another before you get the chance to figure out why? This was the literary equivalent. Far from its marketing as a comic for people who like to think about the world around them, it was a 'remove brain before consuming' piece of media. Michael Bay for the socially conscious, if you will.
But still, I persevered. I picked up issue 2, because blips happen, especially with first issues. I found my faith and my money were sorely misplaced, and shame on me for being fooled twice. So why the heck are we here to review issue 5?
The 5th installment of America's run has enough differences to give it another glance. Kelly Thompson is credited as co-writing what has up to now been a solo effort from Gabby Rivera, and incumbent artist Joe Quinones hands the pencils to Ramon Villalobos. Villalobos is one of my least favourite Marvel artists, and I like Quinones' work, but the combination of a new writer and artist raised the possibility of a refreshed book, so I gave America a third chance.
It turned out much like anything in life that you give a third chance to. I have written before about my dislike of dialogue-heavy comics, and this is a classic example of why it's a bad thing. Before America, Rivera was best known for her novel Juliet Takes A Breath, and the heavy dialogue betrays her background in purely text-based fiction. She has yet to learn how to work with an artist to let the images tell the story as much as the dialogue - in this particular case, the text from this issue could be lifted and translated into a short story, with no images, and very little adaptation would be needed. Telling the story with images as well as words is a fundamental difference between graphic and literary fiction, which the writers have failed to grasp.
This issue sees America team up with Kate Bishop, aka Hawkeye, aka The Other Hawkeye if you're feeling unkind. I actually like Bishop, and I think she encapsulates one of the main arguments people have against Marvel's current habit of pinning familiar superhero names to new characters - she DOESN'T NEED IT. She is more than capable of being a cool, interesting character in her own right without giving her a confusing brand that stops people in our attention-poor reality from finding out more. But I digress. This issue starts by using about a third of the comic to get America to meet up with Kate, talk about stuff, and decide to go on a road trip. That's six pages of dialogue-heavy, uneventful setup to get through before they even get in the car. Chavez and Bishop are besties, Chavez needs to go somewhere and do something, Bishop offers to go with her. That's 2, maybe 2 and a half pages of story at most.
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| All together now, how many issues should this book have lasted for? |
The rest of the book is fairly by-the-numbers action with a hint of a mystery that Thompson is fond of using in the current run of Hawkeye. One thing that stands out is a sequence with America jumping from the car and landing back in it again, the physics of which would take more working out than the trajectory of Lee Harvey-Oswald's bullet. And for those of you that would argue suspension of disbelief is a necessary part of reading comics, that is only true when it is necessary to the story, not to excuse poor planning of an action sequence. Ask me to suspend disbelief only when necessary, and a story will feel much more real and draw me in more effectively. In this case it just felt 5-o-clock-on-a-Friday lazy.
As you've probably guessed, I didn't like this book much. The only improvement over the previous issues was it had some cohesion from beginning to end. That and the chemistry between America and Kate is actually pretty good.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Slightly spoilery, but important: the cover features a dog. At no point in the comic do we see a dog. When your comic is on shaky ground with me already, don't tease me with a dog and not give me one. I like dogs.
2 / 5
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