The Honor Brigade: Space Fight #1, by Marc Alan Fishman – Snarky Synopsis | @MDWorld

June 4, 2012 Marc Fishman 0 Comments

Written by Tom Stillwell, Art by Jethro Morales

Tom Stillwell brings out all the big guns for his epic tribute to crossovers in his new mini-series, Honor Brigade: Space Fight! In reading it, I grew increasingly defiant with every page flip. Every time I wanted to roll my eyes at yet-another-trope being served up, I couldn’t physically do it. I was too busy smirking. The issue revels in its “Been-There-Done-That” attitude, and while it’s not the perfect comic by any means… at the end of the day, Marvel and DC might want to give it a flip through and remember a time not so long ago—when comics were just fun because they could be.

Space Fight assembles Stilwell’s titular band of Chicagoan heroes when an interstellar conqueror proclaims Chicago (and Earth, which is less important than Chicago, duh) to be his own. Cue the shock troops, laser blasts, and fight sequences kiddos. Suffice to say, the book isn’t aiming high with its plot. With a tongue half planted firmly in a cheek, and the other half wagging in the breeze, you won’t be shocked or surprised at all in reading the issue… but you’ll have a hard time not rooting for destruction.

From a scripting perspective, you basically are treated to a checklist of plot points plucked from just about every epic crossover from the last few decades. Honestly, it works and then again it doesn’t. One can’t help but see Tom’s cleverness peak out in a few choice places, before being stamped back into oblivion as we chug towards the next major beat. For those fans who yearn for a book that follows the breakneck pacing of an 80’s book? Look no further. For those of us who may have grown accustomed to a bit more characterization, Space Fight may be a little to light in the loafers. Given that Stillwell makes no bones about the accessibility of his comics, it’s a losing battle demanding more depth; This book is a what-you-see-is-what-you-get because it’s target audience isn’t looking for much else. If you can bowl a strike by hurling the ball right down the middle of the lane, there’s no need to add any spin.

If I could make some criticism (that I won’t immediately excuse a sentence later) it would be first in the story’s villain. Lord Sark of the Siege doesn’t do much to sway my interests. Aside from a twice dropped hint that his conquest is sought to bring back some lost honor, Sark is white toast with a high collar and a robot butler. Second to that that, the Honor Brigade themselves only each get a few panels to shine. Given that I personally have never read their adventures before, most of them come across very flat. Aside from obvious gerund-themed power sets and costuming, it’s hard to delineate from one super to the next. Save of course for Toy Boy. He steals every scene he’s in, and frankly without him, the Brigade is Neapolitan Ice Cream without the Chocolate and Strawberry. Luckily, Stillwell knows this, and ensures that his heroic harlequin gets the most ‘screen time’ as it were.

Don’t get me wrong here folks, the Brigade, and much of the characters throughout this first of two issues, are equal parts homage and pastiche. We’ve seen these heroes before, in countless other iterations. Stillwell smartly sets his book though in an often over-looked real life metropolis (Sweet home, Chicago…), and it in and of itself helps elevate the material. Maybe I’m biased, but as is the Chicago way; I don’t care. There’s a real mid-western quality to the matter-of-factness the book takes on. It’s that “eh, we do what we gotta do, and fer now, we gotta shoots’ the robot aliens, or face sudden doom… Da Bears!” attitude that always lend a wink and a nudge to the reader that yes, we’ve been here before, but we’d be lying if we said we didn’t love the hell out of it.

Art wise, Morales is schizophrenic at best. Some panels are rendered amazingly tight. Others are sketchy and rushed. It’s easy to tell when there was serious time at the boards, and when pages were cranked out to move things along. At times, he can’t quite decide if he’s channeling George Perez or Joe Madureira, and it causes me more than a few times to check if the book employed more than one artist. Morales’ figure work though is commendable. When he has to handle a plethora of bodies on a page, he doesn’t skimp on the body language. It’s also easy to tell he too, loves Toy Boy, as he gets easily the most expressive poses throughout. The colorist Zac Atkinson is decent, if maybe a little heavy-handed in his palate. In wide and city shots, the color is equally natural and brilliantly cartoonish. When scenes are bathed in screen lights, beams, and the like, Atkinson may need to calm down on the special effects and color bleed. When he uses his effects sparingly… it pays off in spades. Artistically speaking, the book may not attain main-stream heights in every panel, but at the end of the day, the product is sound; well designed, decently crafted, and certainly worth every penny of it’s $3.50 price tag.

With only one issue to tie things up, there’s no doubt in my mind I’ll be back for the conclusion. I expect nothing less than rayguns, super-powered cheerleaders, explosions, and a ton more Toy Boy. Tom Stillwell’s Honor Brigade harkens back to comics of my youth, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t recommend you support him (and more indie books, for that matter) in celebrating what true all-ages books can be. Unlike Eric Powell, I don’t see the snark and combative nature in Tom. I see a book that was inspired by a generation of material, repackaged with just enough originality to carve out it’s own micro-niche amongst and ever-growing mountain of super hero books.