By: Geoff Johns and Peter J. Tomasi (writers), Ivan Reis, Ardian Syaf, Scott Clark, Oclair Albert (artists), Vicente Cifuentes, David Beaty (inkers), Peter Steigerwald (colorist)
The Story: Hawkman and Hawkgirl pass through Hath-Set’s tunnel of bones. Somebody can finally see Boston Brand (Deadman). Ronnie is visited by a salty image from Blackest Night.
What’s Good: The quick spoiler-free summary (above) shows that this story is clean, but what the summary misses is that this issue of Brightest Day has fundamentally changed gears. The resurrected are interacting in a big way and the drama surges. Hawkman and Hawkgirl have been alternatively lovey-dovey or partners in crime-fighting so far, but now they get to a real cross-roads. Boston Brand has been chatting up a big-ass glowing white ring for the last three issues. Now, he runs into Hawk and Dove, and although Dove is as predictably soft as her soap-like namesake, Hawk actually throws down a challenge that gets to the core of what Brightest Day is about. And Ronnie? Well, the ghost of Christmas past isn’t really happy to see him. So, on the writing side (dialogue, plotting and conflict), all hand are on deck and things are getting weird.
The art side is the best place to talk about that weirdness, because so much of it is visual. I have to start by taking my cap off to Peter Steigerwald. I met him briefly in Toronto’s comic con last August in his role with the Aspen publishing team, but his color work has been showing up a lot more on the DC side and thank goodness! The pink/violet radiance so reminiscent of Star Sapphire’s power, is brilliantly filamentous and transparent for the tunnel of bones. His shining whites around Brand’s ring are equally riveting as is the salt fiesta around Ronnie. The pencils and inks tell what is essentially a talking head story (except for some roughing up of Brand) in a dynamic way with panel layouts and camera angles shifting and switching to draw the eye across the page and keep it moving. A great example of layout is the top panel of the Silver City, New Mexico page, where the two figures in movement are already on the right edge of a pan-shot to give the feel of vastness and movement. The bottom of the page and the next one are good examples of picking the right camera angle to keep the story in cinematic movement. And, I can’t finish praising the art without a nod to the brilliantly surreal double splash pages for Hawkman and Hawkgirl near the start of the book. I love comics that take me to weird places and the art team on Brightest Day is the right one to take the wheel on this ride.
What’s Not So Good: Hawk and Dove as characters are always a bit of a disappointment. Dove, who always looks like Snowbird from Alpha Flight, has a predictable role to play with no room for growth or maturation or even motivation. Hawk has the same problems except he comes off as unstable instead of boring. I hope that Johns and Tomasi can break them out of these character straight jackets and give them more than the zero-dimensional half-life this pun-based concept has gotten since the Silver Age. (And new costumes that don’t look like they were made for figure skating trials would help.) While I’m in the complaints sections, I should probably also give this award for the cover that has the least to do with the story (drum roll and envelope please….). In a raft of comic books with relevant covers, Brightest Day #4 had no trouble taking this honor. Not even through hints or innuendo does anything like the cover image come up in the story. Too bad. Maybe they should have saved the cover for next issue – Finch did a great job on it.
Conclusion: Johns and Tomasi are putting this series into third gear and the cosmic weirdness is ramping up too. You should buy it, even if I don’t like Hawk and Dove.
Grade: B
-DS Arsenault
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