Mother Panic 1 Featured Reviews 

“Mother Panic” #1

By | November 11th, 2016
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Out of all the books in the DC Young Animal line, “Mother Panic” #1 is probably the most outwardly superhero of the bunch. This isn’t much of a surprise since Jody Houser and Tommy Lee Edwards have turned in a quintessential Gotham story, featuring a costumed crusader balancing life as a member of the top 1% with a personal vendetta against something or another, all while maintaining a precarious grasp on her sanity. The style is grittier, the tone darker, and the ambition less broad. In a series of odd books, having something so . . . normal(?) . . . might make it the oddest one of them all.

Written by Jody Houser
Illustrated by Tommy Lee Edwards

Meet Violet Paige, a celebutante with a bad attitude and a temper to match, who no one suspects of having anything lying beneath the surface of her outrageous exploits. But Violet isn’t just another bored heiress in the upper echelons of Gotham City’s elite. Motivated by her traumatic youth, Violet seeks to exact vengeance on her privileged peers as the terrifying new vigilante known only as Mother Panic.

I’m not saying its superhero DNA is something to hold against “Mother Panic” #1 or anything. It’s an entertaining comic — maybe the most immediately enjoyable and easy to access DC Young Animal comic yet. (I’ll admit that it wasn’t until the second issues of “Doom Patrol” and “Shade the Changing Girl” before I started connecting with those two books.) It flirts with the offbeat and the strange in a way that a grittier superhero comic would, but it never fully commits like “Doom Patrol” or “Cave Carson”, nor does it allow itself to become something like “Constantine: The Hellblazer.”

The story focuses on young Violet Page. She’s returning to Gotham after an undisclosed amount of time in rehab. “You keep going this route, you’re apt to undo everything you’ve built,” her therapist says as they’re about to land and while giving her an injection of something. “Maybe. Maybe not,” Violet says. “Long as it isn’t boring.” Immediately upon their arrival she poses for a few photos and flips off some tabloid journalists.

What’s most interesting here is how Houser and Edwards go to great lengths to separate Violet’s personalities. Between her public persona, the person she is with her mother, and her Mother Panic moniker, we get to see three different aspects of this character. More than that, they’re all vying to have total control of her. We get to see her grief for a mother who can barely remember anything and a father who died in an apparent hunting accident; we see her as she tries to act like the rebel girl of the prosperous class, and effectively act exactly how a rebel girl of the prosperous class would act; finally, we get to see her as a superhero, where she’s at her most focused and determined, but also her most unrelenting. Gerard Way has called her the most unlikeable character of this series, but I think these personality conflicts make her all the more interesting to follow.

As “Mother Panic” #1 continues, the focus splits between Violet’s past and present, cross cutting at will. Edwards doesn’t present these sequences any differently, either in the line work or colors, and we get to share the feeling of Violet coming unhinged. They also devote some time to the antagonist. Introduced in a classic fashion, where an underling has to regrettably enter her lair to admit a mistake, she’s the kind of ridiculously themed over-the-top villain you’d like to see in book like this. Her name is Gala and she’s an artist. Human suffering is the paint for her canvas.

The issue really digs into what it wants the series to explore when Gala appears. “Emotion is the enemy of control,” she says to an underling. “My work, my personal work is all about control.” Both Gala and Violet are desperately working to maintain a certain set of perceptions and perspectives. Where Gala is cool, collected, Violet can barely maintain one aspect of herself from one scene to the next. If you compare this with the other DC Young Animal books, you’ll notice Edwards’s presentation is far sketchier and messy than the others. Often it looks like he attacked the page with the brush, texturing clothes, hair, and the background with angry lines. Sometimes the colors don’t fully fill out the shape and other times it seems like the designs are about to come undone. It works for “Mother Panic” #1, especially when the material deals with control and perception. Having such a dizzying aesthetic never truly allows us to get a firm grip about what’s going on.

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Houser does well balancing her thematic elements with the genre trappings. She even manages to include a cameo from Batman that isn’t too intrusive. The images she and Edwards produce aren’t ever cosmic, and tend to lean toward more quick flashes of violence or mayhem. They’re having fun with the concept and having fun using the freedom the DC Young Animal line grants them.

“Mother Panic” #1 maintains its cool all throughout its debut. The comic embraces a lot of its superhero DNA and while I wouldn’t go so far to say it offers up a clever twist on the conventions, it does have a lot of fun with itself. Jody Houser and Tommy Lee Edwards offer up a fair sampling of what the series wants to be, providing us with plenty of mysteries to follow but not yet bogging itself down in a cryptic mythology. The book is effective and well delivered, and consistent with the value of this publishing line.

Final Verdict: 7.5 – Some solid, entertaining superhero comicking.


Matthew Garcia

Matt hails from Colorado. He can be found on Twitter as @MattSG.

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