Thursday, June 14, 2012

Pull List Review: Frankenstein Agent of S.H.A.D.E. #10

I was confused by this issue. Right from the first scene, with the weird woman who was clearly in love with Frankenstein but didn't matter and never appeared again. And many such details were glossed over after that. Velcoro apparently defeats an elevator full of bad guys off-screen. The team's "sci-bug" (whatever that is) locates their target, but we don't know how. Frankenstein suddenly quotes poetry instead of just going, "Hrrn..." It felt like maybe Matt Kindt was overly eager to pack this first issue with new information, a new attitude for Frank, and a bunch of big monster fights, so rather than doing any of those particularly well he delivers something a tad more jumbled.

The actual story of this treacherous group within S.H.A.D.E. seems to only be getting started, as evidenced by the still-unexplained panels of a woman being strangled, an angry dog, and a straight jacket. I'm curious to see what those are all about, and what happens to Frankenstein once he hits the extra-dimensional water, but for now all of that remains mysterious, and the set-up surrounding it is, unfortunately, disjointed.

Alberto Ponticelli's art is similarly uneven this month. The page of the Creature Commandos on jetpacks looked great, as did the following two-page spread of Untropolis, and I thought the Scare-Eb Agents were very lifelike and creepy. But the roundtable scene at S.H.A.D.E. HQ was full of awkward faces, and Griffith's whole fight sequence seemed a little rushed. Still, by-and-large Ponitcelli remains a good fit for this title, even with the authorial change, because he brings the right balance of lighthearted fun and larger-than-life action. Just a sight less consistent here than usual.

The last page, though, with Frank falling into the water and transforming or dimension-jumping or something on random sections of his body, is visually excellent. So it ends on a strong artistic note as well as a strong narrative one, even though getting there was quite a bumpy ride.
4.0/10

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