“The Beautiful People” (No Spoilers)
Writer: Brian Wood
Pencils: Rebekah Isaacs
Colors: Carrie Strachan
Letters: Jared K. Fletcher
Assistant Editor: Kristy Quinn
Editor: Ben Abernathy
Cover: Fiona Staples
We’re almost done with the re-introduction of the Dv8 gang. It was apparent from the start that this was what Wood was going to do. For the most part, I think he’s done a good job of it. However, I’ve felt some of the re-introductions have been stronger than others.
Here we focus on Sublime and Evo. It’s interesting that Wood decided to put these two in an issue together but if he hadn’t, all eight issues of this series would’ve been taken up by a character. As it stands, it seems that only the last issue will focus on all of them (I realize issue 1 did, but it used Copycat as the main character to do it). Fiona Staples’ beautiful cover is a perfect summary of this issue concerning these two characters. I don’t remember too much about either character so it was nice to focus on them a little. Although, I think ultimately Sublime gets more of a focus than Evo.
I don’t know why, but some of these issues seem to read really fast. It’s true again with this one. It’s got a similar structure to the others in that we see (these are not spoilers) how Sublime got hooked up with her tribe and Evo too. We get a nice showcase and explanation of both of their powers. And we get some good character moments during the majority of the issue. It leads to a conflict at the end that I was expecting but I will say I’m glad it was not resolved by the end of the issue. Instead, it leads us to a pretty good cliffhanger that I think will help Sublime and Evo’s story feel like it didn’t all get forced into this issue.
I can’t end this review without talking about Rebekah Isaac’s art. She is such a solid artist. She’s proven with each issue that she is not going to shortcut her way through any of this (except for her issues with The Carrier, we forgive you Rebekah :), for more on what I’m talking about listen to our interview with her in Episode 2). I hardly ever mention any of the other people on this book but I think colorist Carrie Strachan deserves a big shout out too for helping bring Rebekah’s art to life. I especially love the scenes at night we’ve seen so far. They’ve got such a cool look to them.
Overall, I like the structure of this story but I’m starting to get the feeling that we might have benefited from a few more issues to this series. Obviously I won’t know for sure until it’s over but so far, we are definitely focusing on Freestyle next issue (based on the cover image). So regardless, I’m just happy that we’ve got these characters up on the stands again and that there are taking part in a great story.
7 out of 10 (Above Average)
I still enjoy this series quite a bit but the further and further we get into this the more and more I feel like Brian Wood has fallen into a trap that many writers today fall into. The trap of decompressed storytelling. The artwork is stunning and the story is solid but I think we could get quite a bit more bang for a buck. Wood only has 8 issues to work with and I don’t want to see any panel space wasted.
Yeah, I mentioned this in the latest podcast. I hope we don’t get to issue 8 and I feel like we end just because we’re out of the allotted issues. But who knows, maybe it’ll do well enough that they’ll let these two do a sequel!
Yeah I have high hopes and expectations. I’m not really surprised by all this, though. With Wood being primarily a Vertigo writer he’s gotten himself into the habit of writing everything for the trade and sometimes I think creators that do that forget to pack the single issues as well as they can.