Creative Staff:
Story: Joshua Hale Fialkov
Pencils: Manuel Garcia
Inks: Bit
What They Say:
After an embarrassing defeat at the hands of Captain Midnight, a drunken Skyman accidentally kills an innocent man! Needing a new face for their initiative ASAP, the Skyman Program turns to US Air Force Sgt. Eric Reid: a wounded veteran on the ropes, looking for a new lease on life.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While I had been a good fan of a lot of what Dark Horse Comics did in the 90’s when it came to their superhero lineup, it wasn’t something that I thought I’d get into again with the relaunch that started last year and is set to expand a whole lot more this. For better or worse, my first exposure to this relaunch is through this issue of Skyman, which definitely seems like it comes with some baggage of its own that it has to overcome, something that Joshua Hale Fialkov does pretty well here. Part of the Black Sky banner that will be dominating a good chunk of 2014, we get to deal with the fallout from the Skyman Program in which the previous Skyman went off his rocker a bit, caused a lot of trouble in New York City and shined a spotlight on something that the military had managed to gloss over for awhile but can’t anymore. At least not without a decent public relations campaign while operating their true goals elsewhere.
Following that incident in New York, the current Skyman is off on a bit of a bender in a remote bar where, owing to the nature of technology today, everyone has a camera. It’s not that he’s drinking – and hard – but rather that he goes off on this racist rant about the president, goes on about how he’s given everything to the country, and then proceeds to take the African-American bartender up high into the sky and throws him hard into the building below. Suffice to say, when they gets out – and he’s eager for it to get out – it’s a nightmare for those in Washington. The reactions are amusing as one side goes to release everything on the Skyman Program in order to get it out into the open and absolve some responsibility while the other side, those in the program, look for a way to keep doing what they’ve always been doing while painting a happy face on it. Which is hard, since all the other potential replacements for the current Skyman are pretty much your traditional White Male Privilege archetypes. Even those in charge of the program realize this and have to go through with crushing a few dreams as they’ve all worked long and hard to get to this point in the program only to have it taken away.
Enter Sergeant Eric Reid, a wounded soldier whose craft came apart in Khandahar that’s now working through some serious physical therapy in order to walk again unaided. He’s pushing hard and has that classic can-do spirit since he wants to keep serving and not be a burden, either to his country or to his wife Delia. Little does he know that his African-American heritage makes him ideal for the job at hand of bringing in a new Skyman to help change perceptions. And it’s not something he learns easily since he’s essentially abducted by the program and forced into it with a threat of not staying alive should he decline the offer. It’s a hard offer to decline beyond that though since the suit, when powered up, allows him to have full function with his legs, a lot of strength, heightened reflexes and the ability to fly. That last one is a little wonky for him considering his accident, but you can tell he wants to work through it.
The problem for Eric is that even though he’s pretty into this and kind of unaware of the larger issues going on with this program and how the military has its own goals, is that some of those that were excluded now have it in for him to a good degree. Including his handler, Lieutenant Sharp, who gives him grief about his accident and just rides him hard verbally but also gives him a really solid beating physically. To make matters worse for Eric, the entire suit can be controlled remotely, which just makes him even more of a PR stunt than you would have guessed at first. But that’s what the military needs and you can understand it in that they want to control it completely. But that’s like anything else in that you know that control will exist for only so long before Eric figures out how to get this all to work on his own and out of their control. But that has its own bad potential as well.
I’ve read a smattering of Fialkov’s works before and I liked what I saw, but I never got to delve deep into anything. His work here has a lot to deal with, or at least it feels like it since I’m entering this entire universe fresh here, but he makes it pretty accessible while still feeling like a part of something much larger. That’s not always easy to do, but he hits some good notes here throughout it both in terms of politics, social aspects and general ease of interaction between characters. It’s easy to like Eric, though we don’t really him at this point. Similarly, Manuel Garcia makes this an easy read when it comes to the artwork with inking done by Bit. There’s a very smooth and enjoyable flow to the panel layout where you’re not frustrated in trying to figure out how it’s supposed to go. It’s not filled with splash pages, dialogue is well placed and there’s some good details and style to be had here that makes it so that nobody looks the same or is undefined. If anything, my only issue is that the Skyman costume in the book itself just doesn’t click that well for me in its appeal. I love it on the cover, even with its obvious patriotic bent and intention, but it just feels flatter when it comes to the color design and the detail itself.
In Summary:
Skyman kicks off a new series in the shared superhero universe that Dark Horse is working on and they even include a Project Black Sky checklist on the last page to ensure you know that a lot of suff is connected to it all. I’ve long been a fan of superheroes and I’ve always had an affection for what Dark Horse tried to do in the 90’s. Skyman is a completely new property for me but it’s very accessible here, surprisingly enjoyable and a bit more blunt in some ways than I expected, which made aspects of it almost too realistic to some degree. Fialkov and Garcia have a solid title here that lays down a lot of foundations that I’m looking forward to both seeing exploered in shattered in the next few issues as it shakes out what it wants to do and be.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: January 15th, 2014
MSRP: $3.99
