By: Kel Symons (writer), Mark A. Robinson (art), Paul Little (colors) and Pat Brosseau (letters)
The Story: A tattooed, con artist woman named Felica runs afoul of the mob and gains a superpower.
A few things: 1). Never know what you’ll get. – I’m sure I saw this in Previews a few months ago, but now that I read almost all comics on my iPad, I tend to forget what these stories are about. I look at the Diamond shipping list every Sunday and make a list of what I want to buy that week and see “I Love Trouble” and have no recollection of the pitch. I’ll try most #1s from Image Comics, but to borrow from Forest Gump, Image #1s are like a box of chocolates; you never know what will be inside. Often the issue is “okay”, sometimes I can’t erase it off my iPad quickly enough and every once it awhile, we come across an issue like I Love Trouble #1 that is a sneaky gem of a comic.
2). Very enticing art. – It’s amazing how much character can be built by a gifted art team. Almost all of the essence of our main character, Felecia, comes to us via the art. Robinson lets us know just about everything about her: she’s scampy, has an attitude, is cute, fast, small and generally full of trouble. I mean, how many nice girls do you know who have neck tattoos and wear belly shirts? Robinson works in that cartoony style that affords so much flexibility to an artist who wants to breathe life into his characters or do some fun little action sequences. The other notable thing about this issue is that they aren’t afraid to do a TON of small panels; almost every page has 7+ panels. It gives the creators a lot more opportunity to build characters with a fixed number of pages.
3). Writing that mostly stays out of the way. – Writer Symons doesn’t fall into that “too many words” trap that ensnares more new-to-comics writers. With art of this quality, the writer just needs to stay out of the way. Symons doesn’t push it and just gives us enough of the story to accentuate the art and what words are present are well word-smithed.
4). Meh…..superpowers…. – The one thing I didn’t like about this issue was the introduction of superpowers. Good lord…..don’t we already have enough superpowers in the world of comics? Can’t we just have a story about a trashy/sexy tattoo-girl outwitting stupid mob thugs? Why does she need a superpower?
5). Interesting printing. – As I mentioned above, I read this digitally, but I enjoyed the art enough that I wanted to see what the printed product looked like. Oddly, Image printed this on a very stiff newsprint and it cause the coloring to really wash out. I can’t remember the last time Image used this type of paper. This is a great example of how the art just looks better on an iPad.
Conclusion: Very promising. The art is the big selling point, but it’s also fun to have a comic with a useful female protagonist (even if she is kinda sexed up for a mostly male audience).
Grade: B+
– Dean Stell
Grade
Conclusion