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“A-Next” #2

By | June 18th, 2022
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

The late nineties of superhero comics have always been such a fascinating wild west to me. I know so little about this period that is building off the industry’s most significant recession. With so few eyes drawn to it, it’s ripe for uncovering fascinating hidden gems or unreadable stinkers. This year I’ve dug up the series and burgeoning franchise “A-Next” to sink my teeth into. Which category will this spinoff-of-a-spinoff fall in? Let’s find out together, dear readers!

A-Next #2
Scripted by Tom DeFalco
Plotted and Illustrated by Ron Frenz
Finished by Brett Breeding
Colored by Bob Sharen
Lettered by Jim Novak

When I finished discussing issue #1, my overall thoughts were enjoyment but hesitation that so many of the characters I found compelling in the issue were taken off the board by the end. I thought that perhaps this was DeFalco condensing the team and putting more stock into the original, newer characters. Issue #2 does not fully live up to these hopes, unfortunately, and seems to make the same mistakes as the debut.

The premise of this issue already lacks the crackling energy that propelled the first forward. The first scene is the new, stripped-back team waiting for Stinger to arrive to a pow-wow, which lulls the energy from page one. Having your exciting new characters stand around waiting and complaining is not a great way to build hype for your new, proactive super team. Additionally, DeFalco seems to undermine his own POV character Thunderstrike. The college-age rookie superhero has gone from endearing, wide-eyed team player to disillusioned and whiny art student who’d rather be ANYWHERE else. The art in this section is solid, but Frenz and Breeding show their seams a little here, as they clearly prefer drawing action scenes to slower, dialogue scenes. Everyone stands around with the composure of a mint-condition action figure, although points to them for one scene in which Thunderstrike is… striking a particularly seductive wall-lean.

The meat of this issue is the team going to investigate a crashed Kree probe ship, summoned by the former Avenger Goliath who now simply goes by Dr. Bill Foster, and his son John. DeFalco writes these two with an interesting dynamic. Bill has settled much more into a worried father figure, concerned that his son has no direction in life, whilst John is hot-headed and rowdy. Meanwhile, A-Next has a bunch of interpersonal banter on the way to the site as J2 powers down from his Juggernaut form to reveal he’s just a kid with a flannel shirt, which Thunderstrike, quite reasonably, questions a teenager’s ability to be on a superhero strike team. Frenz and Breeding do a good job depicting J2 AKA Zane as a kid: he’s considerably smaller than the rest of the team, sports a very prestige spiky haircut, and his clothes don’t quite fit him. In an era notorious for drawing teenagers like folks in their late twenties, this attention to detail is appreciated. Jim Novak also does some well-placed, fun sound effects when Zane changes forms, to make things even more fun.

Once the team gets to the crash site, they’re met by the classic Marvel bad guy, the Kree Sentry. This gives DeFalco a chance to use Mainframe as his own nerd-out voice as he geeks out about this character’s Kree heritage, which is really the only character development we’ve seen from this unknown team element in the series thus far. Zane turns back into J2 with a pleasant attitude, inheriting the title of the most fun and interesting on the team. Considering that he’s the only character that has his own solo book, it makes sense that he feels a little more presence, but knowing that also makes me sad that he gets to absorb the spotlight here too. The action here is pretty fun and invokes classic Jack Kirby slugfests, with J2 and Thunderstrike laying into the Sentry with some textbook wrestling moves. However, the panel layout is pretty simple and geometric, which feels like it cramps the fighting. Coupled with desaturated, ‘realistic’ coloring, it makes for a perfectly fine but ultimately forgettable beat-em-up.

The final scene is both the most exciting and most disappointing of the bunch. Bill and John, who’ve been trapped with Stinger inside the wrecked Kree ship, stumble upon a mechanism that infuses John with Kree DNA and effectively enacts a Captain Marvel-esque transformation upon him. He bears the classic green-and-white Kree uniform, which works because of its simplicity. It’s got classic superhero trimmings like a head fin and chest logo and enables the characters to flex all their chiseled, god-like features in a very Bronze Age, Jim Starlin-esque form. DeFalco gives John some very fun and free-wheeling banter as he makes light work of the Kree Sentry. Since his transformation, John has gained some knowledge of the Kree’s mission on Earth and attempts to disguise himself to the Sentry as a fellow officer, but he quickly breaks kayfabe once he realizes his newfound strength will work far more easily. The battle ends with a massive explosion punctuated by massive red “SHRUUM!” lettering and violent yellows and reds, letting Novak and Sharen flex their creativity even just for a single panel.

You’d think this scene to work as a great saving grace for an otherwise lukewarm issue, right? Unfortunately, this is where the disappointment kicks in. While it seems like the logical conclusion for introducing this character with so much instant motivation and development is to put him on the core A-Next team, right? Nope! DeFalco shoves him off right on the last panel, with the nail-in-the-coffin dialogue “Wherever the Earth Sentry flies — He’ll fly alone!”. I understand that DeFalco is seemingly building more characters for the wider universe outside of this book, but it just comes off as such a poor decision when his own core cast is barely constructed. I still have hope for future issues of this book (God knows I’ll always step in to bat for this schlock) but these decisions two issues in a row have me feeling a little more skeptical about this series.


//TAGS | 2022 Summer Comics Binge | A-Next

Rowan Grover

Rowan is from Sydney, Australia! Rowan writes about comics and reads the heck out of them, too. Talk to them on Twitter at @rowan_grover. You might just spur an insightful rant on what they're currently reading, but most likely, you'll just be interrupting a heated and intimate eating session.

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