There was a time when Brian Michael Bendis was an indie darling. (Bendis? Brian Bendis? Brian Michael Bendis?) (Okay, bit out of the way, I’m done). He exploded onto the scene with “Torso” and “Goldfish,” gritty crime graphic novels that were like no comic that came before them. Even when Bendis was the top writer in Marvel, he kept his independent books going, books like “Scarlet” and “Brilliant” and “Powers.” Bendis as a writer has a lot of range, and more experience than anyone in the biz. But judged on “The Ones” #1, The Great One has lost his fastball.
Cover by Jacob EdgarWritten by Brian Michael Bendis
Illustrated by Jacob Edgar
Colored by K.J. Diaz
Lettered by Joshua ReedFrom Award-winning writer Brian Michael Bendis, comes the next, best awesome super team to end all super teams . . . THE ONES!
Every single person in every mythology that was told they were THE ONE are brought together for the first time to defeat . . . THE ONE. The actual one. The real actual one. This amazing new vision is brought to life by wunderkind artist and cocreator Jacob Edgar (Batman, Army of Darkness). Watch as he brings explosive comics splendor to this big new world! Think Good Omens meets Ghostbusters meets The Adam Project meets The Goonies meets Everything Everywhere All at Once meets, um, anything else you’ve ever liked!
So right away, “Ones” suffers from a sort of foggy high concept. The original pitch must have been something like: “What if a bunch of Chosen Ones had to team up?” The thing is, while I sort of know what that means, I’m not entirely clear on what the rules of that archetype are. And why are there multiple Ones? Are they getting pulled from parallel worlds? The multiverse is hot right now.
Reading “Ones,” you see that Bendis has Buffy on the brain. The Chosen Ones are brought together to oppose the Antichrist. So that roots us in a familiar fantasy ouvre, this is going to be a contemporary urban fantasy where characters quip one-liners while using medieval weapons to fight monsters in a modern city. We get a little of that; one of the Ones in particular looks an awful lot like Buffy Summers/Elsa Bloodstone, and she does impale a demon with a sword. But most scenes in “Ones” #1 are quiet conversations. I know, in a Bendis book?
Unfortunately, this issue plays to all of Bendis’ weaknesses. There is too much dialogue that says too little. It’s a major testament to letterer Joshua Reed that he keeps the word balloons from drowning the art. There’s also a major over-reliance on two page spreads. Used once or twice in an issue they can be effective, but there are tons. They never go with a dramatic moment in the story; you can tell that Bendis knows he just scripted a two page spread of tiny dialogue panels. Now he’s giving his artist a break, a chance to draw a cool thing and not talking heads over and over. But relying on splash pages to draw attention away from your two page dialogue grids is two wrongs not making a right. A hat on a hat.
Even more egregiously, “Ones’ never finds the tone. It’s not funny enough to be a comedy, nor dramatic enough to be an action adventure. The first scene is all about one of the Ones, who was a One when he was a baby, is being recognized at the grocery store like a TV sitcom star trying to lay low. The three-page scene effectively introduces the main character, but what is the conflict here? He doesn’t seem to want a normal life. By the end of the issue he’s down to fight the Antichrist. We don’t understand enough about the Ones to get why they’d be recognized or how the public feels about them. What a weird scene to open with; it’s boring and wastes pages that needed better worldbuilding.
Which is a bummer because the art, by Jacob Edgar, is totally rad. It’s similar to Michael Avon Oeming’s style in “Powers,” in the same family as Darwyn Cooke. You’re looking at big bold pulpy characters made up of blocks, who evoke a person more than they resemble. It’s great for cartooning and sells a tone that the writing never does. With a stronger story and a better script, Edgar would be burning these pages up. Friends of Bendis don’t seem to have trouble finding comic work, so I hope to see a lot more Edgar work in the future. He’s got a strong personal style that can only get strong with time.
“Ones” seems fated to end up forgotten on library shelves across the country. It doesn’t have a clear enough sense of self to distinguish itself in a crowded comics market. Edgar’s art is eyecatching, and I would certainly pick up an issue just having seen the cover alone, but “Ones” never comes together coherently as a good comic book. If you are a Bendis completist check it out. Otherwise, explore this genre and you’ll find tons of shocking, irreverent comics to quip their way through the darkness.
Final Verdict: 4.5 – A fun art style isn’t enough to save a muddled debut issue.
