I hadn’t read any of the Avatar: The Last Airbender comic books, as good as the show was, because there were so many. With the recent announcement that Nickelodeon’s new Avatar Studios will expand the Avatar/Korra universe on the big screen and beyond, now seemed as good a time as any to jump on board with Dark Horse’s latest graphic novel, starring the blind, earthbending prodigy Toph Beifong.
Written by Faith Erin HicksCover by Peter Wartman
Art by Peter Wartman
Colored by Adele Matera
Lettered by Richard Starkings & Jimmy BetancourtFor some, perfection just isn’t enough.
Things are looking bright at the Beifong Metalbending Academy! But after all the adventures Toph’s had with Aang, Sokka, Zuko, and Katara, the whole thing feels a bit dull. Luckily, Sokka and Suki come to visit and reintroduce some familiar faces from their wandering days. And while out and about to celebrate, Toph discovers something that just might put the sparkle back in her eye. . .
First things first, there’s no recap of what Toph’s been up in the previous books set after the end of Avatar — it’s assumed that newcomers like myself know from The Legend of Korra that she founded the metalbending police force of Republic City, which is what we’re presumably seeing the origins of. Fortunately, Hicks brings in Sokka and Suki at the start, so that Toph can explain to them — and therefore the reader — who’s sponsoring her operation, and who her subordinates (Ho Tun, Penga, and the “Dark One”) are. It’s a simple but fun workaround.
The second immediate thing you notice about Avatar in a printed medium is how faithful the look of everything is to the show, and yet it feels earthier, more homemade; the outlines aren’t perfect single lines, instead consisting of several strokes with varying degrees of thickness. This being a comic, it’d be unreasonable to ask an artist to keep redrawing the background every time the angle of a scene changes between panels, and Adele Matera sometimes fills a background with a single color, which often reflects a character’s emotions, as well as where they are physically.
Toph was one of the most fun and acerbic characters in the series, and the story Hicks concocts for her here is generally breezy and comedic in tone; the character’s dilemma in the book is that she’s bored — it really is that mundane. Sokka and Suki invite her to a concert, held by the hippie musicians from “The Cave of Two Lovers,” who similarly bore the living daylights out of her, and she eventually sneaks out and discovers an underground bending arena. Unfortunately, everyone recognizes her as the Avatar’s companion and therefore “the man,” foiling her chance to relive her glory days as an earthbending wrestler.
Plot wise, this is basically a 22-minute episode, but thematically, there’s a lot going on. Many of the people who watched the show when it first aired as children are going to relate to Toph’s bitterness that her life is no longer the freewheeling adventure of the cartoon, and the way she describes her days as a neverending cycle of sleeping, eating, teaching, and sleeping, will seem particularly sympathetic to those who are now working from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Later on, Toph has a conversation with the singer Chong, who looks back on how his life has changed because he’s now playing music for money, rather than out of his love for his art. It’s a pretty profound conversation that will strike a chord (no pun intended) with freelance writers and artists, who’ve turned their hobbies into their professions; it also reassures them, or those thinking of going into the arts, that there’s nothing wrong with taking an “establishment” gig, as Toph would put it, if you need to pay for food, or a nice place to lay your head. (You’ll likely lose count of how many times these former wanderers mention how nice having a bed is.) The extra pages allow the 78-page book enough space to greatly slow down the pacing, emphasizing how little is happening in Toph’s life.
Wartman’s art is incredibly expressive and complements Hicks’s writing very well; he also leans heavily into the show’s Japanese influences, with moments where characters turn into chibis — like the aforementioned panel where Toph describes her new daily pattern, or hearts and sparkles to accentuate their expressions. Matera’s coloring creates a more saturated vision of the show’s world, and makes some clever decisions, such as red thunderbolt shapes that convey how Toph senses the vibrations coming from the underground benders, or sepia-tinged flashbacks that perfectly bridge the inkwash world of Avatar with the newsreel one of Korra. Starkings and Betancourt’s lettering is excellent, often matching the colors of the elements they’re creating sounds for.
Overall, this was a fun way to revisit Avatar‘s world, and reunite with some old favorites, as well as to meet some new ones. (The Dark One is especially funny.) It’s easy to grumble that Toph’s spotlight graphic novel doesn’t explore a more significant period of her life between Avatar and Korra (like her relationships with the men who fathered her daughters), but this is a well written, charmingly illustrated book, that’s not too long or too short, and which reminds us of the importance of finding breaks from work — it just goes to show, you never know what you might be missing out on, if you’re only absorbed in what you think must be done.
