“Livewire” #4

In this issue a character has an emotional breakthrough.

Written by Vita Ayala
Illustrated by Raúl Allén and Patricia Martín
Lettered by Saida Temofonte
No friends, no teammates, no mentor…and soon, no hope!

Once, Livewire dreamed of devoting herself to the betterment of humankind. Now, her most steadfastly held ideals are about to be tested like never before as she struggles to stay alive in the clutches of a fearsome new foe! But who is the mysterious psiot mercenary hunting her…and more importantly, who do they work for?

The event “Harbinger Wars 2” didn’t really grab me, despite early promise. It went for scale and lost the humanity, the opposite of the first event. And, like the majority of Event books, it failed to make an impact, or the illusion of impact, across the line. “Livewire” created by writer Vitya Ayala and artists Raul Allen and Patricia Martin is starting to make up for that lack. As the series closes out its first arc with “Livewire” #4 the creative teams excavation of “Harbinger Wars 2” concludes and positions the series in a strong character centric place going forward. Most of the time Valiant’s adherence to 4 issue arcs and trades leaves things feeling a little thin and in need of 10 more pages. With the first arc of “Livewire” and this concluding issue, the creative team find the right balance.

An important aspect of that balance is the antagonist of the piece, Pan de Santos. Pan was a former member of Harada’s Foundation, who was cast aside in favor of Amanda. Despite reading a fair amount of Valiant, it would be hard to name a number of its villains. Valiant is not unlike the MCU in how they emphasizes the protagonists as the core selling point and villains rarely recur. This maybe a superhero book, but after Livewire is done with Pan it seems highly unlikely they will be back to trouble her again. Yet, due to Ayala’s writing and the art teams work, Pan is one of the more memorable antagonists. With the four issue structure page real-estate is at a premium, which often results in antagonists more as functions than dimensional characters. Ayala’s writing doesn’t make him super dynamic, but they do a fantastic job of creating meaning from that character in the context of Amanda McKee’s life and the present story. They are another victim of Amanda’s fraught road to righteousness, in an arc that is about her dealing with the aftermath of technologically blacking out the United States of America and causing the death of unknown numbers. This makes Pan the perfect antagonist for this story.

Pan has the right kind of narrative reflection to Amanda, a discounted Foundation cast off – not unlike her team of “Secret Weapons” – out for vengeance against the woman who ruined their life and burning down the thing that gave it meaning. Pan is a microcosm of the macro reaction the U.S. Government is having in regards to her. Valiant is a world where a black woman is among the most powerful beings on the planet and a Visogoth wears sentient alien armor, there is room to work through these reflections and metaphors more directly. That ability for more direct, literal, interpretations may be this mediums greatest strength. Pan’s powerset is like emotional vampirism on top of the normal aspects of vampirism. That ability to drain emotions when mixed with the visual stylings of Raul Allen and Patricia Martin is the catalyst for Amanda to work through things on an emotional level.

Pan’s vampirism involves sucking or forcing memories upon someone. With Amanda at their mercy she is bombarded with her own memories and those of her victims. The use of powers in that way is smart, allowing Allen and Martin to insert them midstream and visually disrupt the flow of conversation. These memories take the form of full length horizontal panels with their own filter to visually segment them from the conversation in reality. The use of horizontal panels also contrasts with the vertically tight close ups that visually define Amanda and Pan’s conversation in the real world. Inserting them in this way also allows them to keep up the motif Amanda’s power dampening chip looming in the background, which turns the whole sequence into classic Hitchcockian suspense. Like the nervous viewers knowledge of the bomb under the table, readers nervously wait for Amanda’s neuropathways to reroute around the blockage and see her eyes crackle with electricity again. The use of memories and the chip help earn the moment of Amanda’s emotional breakthrough in regards to her culpability with the events of “Harbinger Wars 2” and have it land.

In “Harbinger Wars 2” the U.S. Government was, and continues to be, monstrous in the way the military industrial complex is in Valiant. That doesn’t mean Amanda McKee’s actions were heroic or right. Justified, sure, but the sad thing in life is everybody has their reasons. She was trying to protect her fellow psiots and her team, and she hurt and killed innocent people in the process. She also hurt Pan, and helped put him on this path. The creative teams decision to have her own that pain, making it the emotional climax of four issues worth of build, is one of the most effective sequences I’ve read in a comic in a while. The most important moment isn’t the instant her eyes light up, it’s her powerless and apologizing to Pan with what could be her last breaths.

Functionally reborn, it’s time to work things out physically. With her powers back, it goes about as you would expect. Raul Allen and Patricia Martin have done great work, but I’m not sure their graphic and panel heavy style works well for fisticuffs. Their art is able to track the overall physical geography of Livewire and Pan’s fight and make for a couple of nice hero shots. At the same time there isn’t a great sense of flow or dynamism to the action. The patterned page layouts, abstract images of technology, and memories are the moments that shine in Livewire and Pan’s final fight. The choreography is just a little stiff.

“Livewire” #4 is an excellent capper to the first arc of an ongoing series and setups the series emotional foundation going forward. The final issue guides Amanda down an emotional path and more importantly earns those moments. Valiant likes to star the solicit for a new arc with “ALL-NEW ARC! ALL-NEW JUMPING-ON POINT!” With how this issue ends, “Livewire” #5 would likely be an excellent point to jump on.

Final Verdict: 8.0 – “Livewire” ends the first arc on a resounding note, that has the series emotionally setup for the adventures to come.