It’s been a while since we’ve been able to visit Mike Allred’s quirky brainchild, “Madman.” Though that character is not the subject of this series, it was with much fanfare that Image comics announced a return to that universe through “It Girl and the Atomics.” But will fans of Allred’s beloved series find something to like without his creative juices behind it?
Written by Jamie S. Rich
Illustrated by Mike NortonFresh from the pages of Mike Allred’s MADMAN: Snap City’s favorite heroine is ready for her own crimefighting adventures! With the Atomics boys in outer space, it’s up to It Girl to keep the streets safe. Easier said than done: The Skunk, the man who murdered her sister, is out of jail and back to old tricks. Meanwhile, Dr. Flem has a brand new space-time experiment and wants It Girl to be his guinea pig!
Right away, it’s clear that this series is going to be quite tangential to the original “Madman.” Staying away from the core of a story that has already had been wrapped up and closed off is a satisfying approach for new and old readers. Anyone can pick up this issue and understand 95% of what’s going on without consulting the wiki-gods.
The story begins with a typical sequence of street-level superheroics. We see It Girl swinging through Snap City, punching out goons and purse-snatchers whilst delivering your usual crime-fighting banter. These sequences feel a little too by-the-book, actually. Thousands of superhero stories have done these scenes throughout comic history, so there needs to be something to set them apart these days. Unfortunately, Jamie S. Rich’s script is a couple notches less clever than it needs to be. The banter is unmemorable, the humor often falls flat, and unfortunately these introductory scenes take up too much of the issue.
It Girl herself feels as disjointed as the pacing of the issue and wanders around the city in abject boredom. It’s this boredom leads her to Dr. Flem’s lab and a band of familiar characters from the Madmen world. Though it is only the last few pages, it is in Dr. Flem’s lab that the script finally shows some ingenuity. Rich presents a view of human boredom in a way that we almost never experience in superhero comic books, and though the subject is “boredom”, it’s actually where the story gets a little interesting. It Girl’s character seems impulsive and flighty throughout the issue, to the point that she is even called “dense” to her face. For all of the faults in the pacing of the plot so far, Rich’s character work is on point. It Girl’s impulsiveness in the face of boredom is what drives this issue to a cliffhanger.
For all its quirk, the most memorable thing about “Madman” has always been Mike Allred’s bold-lined pencils and cartoony design work. His style is truly one of the most distinct in modern comics, so much so that it sets up very clear expectations for this book. But if he’s not going to do your interior work, you might as well get Eisner Award winner Mike Norton to do it. Norton comes through in spades by melding his unique sense of visual perspective and facial expressions with Allred’s pop art design sense. Norton simplifies his linework a bit to get a little closer to Allred’s cartooning style without aping it, and when the story turns up the wacky science a bit, there are visual nods to Allred’s earlier work that Norton captures in pitch-perfect homage.
The hardest thing about playing in the same world as Mike Allred would have to be nailing the art. On that end of things, “It Girl and the Atomics” should satisfy the expectations of the reader. The plot was in a really interesting place by the end of the issue, but what led up to it seemed too inconsequential in comparison. The script was too little, too late in living up to the verve of the originals.
Final Verdict: 6.5 – Browse it, but it needs to keep the momentum of the last few pages going.
