Recently, Dynamite has gone to great lengths to revitalize their line and broaden it to a wider, more inclusive audience. Red Sonja, Dejah Thoris, and Vampirella have lately seen new life from younger creators. Now, Miss Fury joins the fray, with a new story, a new mystery, but the same old fury.
Written by Corinna Bechko
Illustrated by Jonathan Lau and Vinicius AndradeThe Golden Age heroine returns! New York during the Second World War is a place of mystery and intrigue, but with all our boys fighting in Europe, who will stand up to the forces of darkness at home? Miss Fury is ready to step into the breach, but even she doesn’t understand the shadow she carries within herself. Is it a force of good or of evil? And can she learn to control it in time to stop the deadly attack that threatens to destroy the Big Apple?
From the moment of her creation, Miss Fury has always bore a duplicitous existence. There’s been this undercurrent of deceit and doubling to the character, helped in no small part because creator June Mills signed her name Tarpé Mills in an effort to conceal her gender. She fought crime, but she also wore fashionable outfits and gear — much like Mills herself.
Created for Bell Syndicate in 1941, Miss Fury (then Black Fury), had her slew of Golden Age villains, including a lot of mad scientist and Nazi agents. Dynamite has striven to maintain that sort of old school adventuring spirit with their version of the character. Rob Williams and Jackson Herbert delivered a weird time-traveling adventure in 2013, but now, Corinna Bechko and Jonathan Lau put her firmly back in 1941, and amp the pulp sensibilities considerably.
Due to the men being deployed overseas, this was a period of time where women were able to rise up and take over a lot of the more powerful positions in the country. Marla Drake is a senior marine engineer, and the firm she works for has been tasked with one of the few non-military projects being constructed at the time. It’s in conjunction with the Brazilian government and through the suave contact she’s had in the past. Late one night, a group of thugs break in and steal her plans for their own nefarious purposes.
The book is welcoming enough and Bechko does well to distinguish Drake from Miss Fury. It’s easy to jump in and figure out what’s going on even if you haven’t read 75 years worth of material, though I’m certain there’s plenty of allusions and nods for those that have. Lau leans heavily on a noir look, which fits the pulpy attitude of the rest of the book. His set pieces are clear, his characters distinguishable from each other, and it seems like he’s having fun drawing the book. Take a look at the sequence where Drake hitches a ride on an elevated train. The two of them actually do well at balancing out images and words, so the book doesn’t feel too breezy or too overcrowded.
There’s a lot that happens in the book. Actually, it feels like there’s too much that happens. In 22 pages, Drake gets robbed, has a long flashback to Brazil, fights this blonde lady in the theater, chases down some criminals, and uncovers numerous secrets. Bechko and Lau are so eager to get to the next part that skip over a lot of stuff in the current scene. It felt like there should be all these intense chases and high drama, but the sequences never exactly picked up. There’s so much going on yet hardly anything much happens. It almost comes off like a pitch.
Bechko and Lau offer a lot for “Miss Fury” #1. The atmosphere is great. They have a strong understanding of the characters and the people all feel different. But the book bites off a lot more than it needs to, and what should have been an exciting and thrilling pulp adventure quickly flickers along. Maybe with the main mystery being established by the end of this issue, they’ll take more time to develop the story, but for now we’re just given a hurried, if nevertheless enticing, introduction..
Final Verdict: 6.8 – appropriate aesthetic, though the breakneck pace doesn’t feel as grounded.
