With the first story arc over and the first villain of the series defeated, “Bedlam” takes an issue to catch it’s breath and get set up for the next arc, but not everything is as it seems. Classic Nick Spencer.
Written by Nick Spencer
Illustrated by Ryan Browne
“Way Back When.”
There’s nothing quite like a good bridge. Sometimes it can let you cross a river and sometimes it can allow for the transition from chorus to verse. Here, though, Nick Spencer has decided to employ a bridge in order to take some down time between story arcs. This issue is a breather issue as Spencer sets up the next story arc and where the characters will go through that arc. Joining him on art is Ryan Browne, who takes over from Riley Rossmo as the series artist and manages to keep the series style cohesive while making it his own. However, the biggest problem with bridge issues looms over this one: how much of what happens here actually matters in the coming arc?
Nick Spencer is practically notorious at this point for dense, complicated narratives building to a larger mystery, thanks to the success of “Morning Glories”. However, not as much of that is played with in “Bedlam” as one might imagine. A lot of the conflicts we have seen so far in the first story arc have been direct conflicts between Madder Red and the First or between Fillmore Press and the criminals of Bedlam. In this issue, we see a glimpse into the past with one of the darkly funniest cold opens ever set to panel as Madder Red terrorizes the city of Bedlam with two decapitated heads as puppets. Madder Red is an excellent villain character, who is darkly humourous and violent and Nick Spencer knows exactly how to use him in moderation so he doesn’t overwhelm the issue. The rest of the issue, however, focuses in part on Fillmore Press dealing with isolation and on the expansion of the world he lives in. This issue may be a bit of a slow one, but it really delves closer to the characters.
A lot more focus is put here on Detective Acevedo as she tries to create a special crimes unit based on catching supervillains. This really serves this issue well as the audience gets to see the world this story takes place in open up a bit more. We get a better sense of how this world operates in the face of having major superheroes and their opposing supervillains operate within the city of Bedlam. It’s really what makes this issue so interesting despite it not really having much in the way of plot progression to the next arc.
Spencer is joined here by Ryan Browne rather than Riley Rossmo, but unless you were looking for the change in artist you might not even notice it. Browne really makes the series style hits own in this issue which feels both cohesive yet distinct from the prior issues. Browne’s style keeps the scratchy pencils that had been established by Rossmo, but his work here is arguably the cleanest the book has seen. Characters seem more distinct and expressive while in keeping with the style of the book. Possibly the only downside to Browne emulating the style set for the book is that the scratchiness of the pencils leaves a lot of the detail out of his work. That’s not to say that Browne’s work here is at all bad, in fact it’s very good, it’s just that the style seems to overpower a lot of the detail in his pencils.
The majority of this issue that isn’t devoted to the story of Fillmore and Acevedo is focused on the set up for what is mostly likely the antagonist for the next arc. We see a number of what look like unconnected one-page segments that slowly but surely connect as the issue progresses. It’s a nice mystery play from Spencer to keep the issue from seeming empty compared to the story packed opening issues, but the one main drawback is that overall still seems a little on the light side. There are a lot of pages that bookend the main story dedicated to set up here and the big question then becomes ‘Was it really worth it?’. In the long run, maybe, but as a single issue this just feels a tad on the empty side, especially coming off of the climax of the first story arc.
There are a few elements at play against this issue from the unfortunately lightweight story to the series style taking away somewhat from Ryan Browne’s art that maybe make this issue a little less enjoyable as it should be. Hopefully, this is just teething pains as the book switches artist and story arcs because this book is a lot better than this issue makes it out to be. Here’s hoping when the next story arcs kicks in that it returns to the strength that this book should be at.
Final Verdict: 7.0 – A trip at the hurdle from a good book. Hopefully, they can keep running strong.
