Silver Surfer #1 – Review

By: Dan Slott (story), Michael Allred (art), Laura Allred (colors)

The Story: When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true—sort of.

The Review: Would you know it, this is my third Marvel #1 issue this week! That’s definitely something of a record for me, a self-professed DC man. Then again, I’ve never borne any antipathy towards Marvel, and I’ve always been interested in exploring more of that universe. If nothing else, reviewing so many #1s all at once makes for an interesting study in how different writers handle debut issues.

Of his peers, Slott strikes the best balance among all the essential parts of a strong first issue. Felipe Smith focused almost entirely on thrill rides on All-New Ghost Rider, while Ales Kot got so caught up in character development that he didn’t start working on Iron Patriot‘s plot until nearly the last minute. Slott manages to cover all these areas and do quite a bit of world-building besides, resulting in an issue really worth following.

This may be my own Marvel ignorance speaking, but at first blush, Silver Surfer (a.k.a. Norrin Radd) seemed an unusual protagonist for an ongoing. As the most cosmic of cosmic characters, employed by Galactus, he came across as a bit too high-brow to have anything as trivial as adventures. But then, he’s no longer in Galactus’ employ anymore, is he? With his misdeeds as a former herald still weighing on his head, he has a powerful motivation to travel the universe, doing what good he can. After infusing a dying micro-sun with new life, he thinks, “I am happy to have saved a billion lives…but even a billion billion will not make up for my past sins.”

It’d be easy enough to turn Norrin into a morose sort of hero, but Slott imbues him with a surprisingly well-rounded personality, capable of confusion, anger, even wryness. This makes Norrin an unexpectedly human character in the midst of an unexpectedly delightful plot. On paper, there’s nothing remotely delightful about the impending destruction of the Impericon by the Never Queen, but the Impericon is such a fun setting and the way Norrin gets wrangled into saving it by the Incredulous Zed is so amusing, you can’t help smiling as the story goes along.

Every solo character needs supporting players, and Slott attaches Norrin to an entirely new character, Dawn, who runs an inn with her father in Anchor Bay, California. It is she the Motivator identifies as perfect “leverage” to push Norrin into the Impericon’s service, yet Norrin states quite bluntly, “Okay. I have absolutely no idea who that is.” But Zed implies the Motivator can see into Norrin’s future as well (it “sees the truth of…who you will be“), so Dawn may very well become the “one person in all of creation who means the most” to him.

The interesting question is why. Dawn’s certainly endearing enough, helpful, sweet-tempered, and funny (accused of lying about a fish she claims Albert Einstein caught while at her inn, she replies, “If I were, we would’ve used a bigger fish.”), without being over-the-top virtuous. And the fact that she’s a homebody, generally uninterested in venturing from Anchor Bay but still curious about the outside world, gives her some novel complexity. But what makes her a good partner for Norrin, as she inevitably will be?

Maybe the answer lies in the past, when her and her twin sister Eve wish on a falling star. Eve wishes to see the world, while Dawn wishes “that start could just keep going. Then everyone could get a wish. And it could stay up in the sky forever.” From all appearances, Eve gets her wish, so Dawn’s bound to gets hers, too. But making that wish on what turns out to actually be Silver Surfer means that Norrin gets to continue on his way, helping fulfill the wishes of others, for a long time.

Allred’s art, like Javier Pulido’s, instantly conveys a retro feel, perhaps from his simple but bold linework. However, Allred has a greater emphasis on dimension than the flattish Pulido, and his sense of perspective is far more sophisticated most retro-styled comics. Laura Allred’s colors are indispensable in such circumstances; her careful use of shading gives much greater depth to the visuals than Michael’s lines by themselves can deliver, and her love of contrast between a generally pastel palette with bursts of vivid hues makes the issue overall pop.

Conclusion: Enthusiastically imaginative yet sincerely bittersweet, this issue almost perfectly sets up the rest of the series to come, though we have yet to see if the introductory conflict will pan out to something worthwhile.

Grade: A-

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: – The Impericon does sound like a great Spring Break destination: “The snowflower slalom… That white powder is their pollen. Our skis are their bees. …Our bazaar runs along the entire equator.”