Phil was certainly busy with all his galactic travels.
Creative Staff:
Story: Frank J. Barbiere
Art: Joe Bennett & Jonathan Lau
What They Say:
Part 1 of New Story Arc! Ok, so 1) Erica’s got ALL the Solar powers. 2) Erica doesn’t know how to USE the Solar powers. 3) Erica’s dad keeps bugging her about HOW to use the Solar powers. 4) Erica’s lost waaaaaay the hell out in space BECAUSE of the Solar powers, and 5) Pretty much every alien ever wants to catch Erica and STEAL the Solar powers. Things are gonna blow UP. Welcome to the most bats&%t insane lost-in-space story EVER.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With the first arc wrapping up in the previous issue, Solar, man of the Atom is now able to do a little galactic tripping, which is a big plus. While there’s a lot of interesting material to work with on the Earth bound side, I’m glad to see that Barbiere is interesting in showing a bit more of what’s going on and what Phil may have been up to that Erica now has to clean up. We got a nice chunk of that with the fallout of the first arc in seeing the aliens coming to Earth to claim him since his abilities and potential is something that can radically change energy creation for a whole lot of civilizations and change the balance of power for many. It was all wrapped up neatly, for the moment as it could always resurface I’m sure, and we ended up with Erica being thrown quite a distance away at the end of it all.
Erica’s time with the alien she melded with briefly filled her in a lot of things that Phil had been up to and we see how he had been involved with a number of different cultures it seems and through his efforts with one of them may have caused a war by providing a power source to them. The dynamic between Erica and Phil is still definitely tense to say the least and her frustration is certainly palpable with how she interacts with him, understandably so. She’s intent on simply being done with all of this and having him fix it when they get back to Earth, but there’s that part of your mind that even as he agrees in his own way, you sense that he’s just placating her at the moment. Showing her how to get to the alien world so he can try and fix his mistakes there is nic,ely done, visually beautiful in its own way, but it naturally leads to a lot of chaos as she ends up being chased by some of the feral locals until she connects with Barrus, one of the aliens that Phil knows.
What’s interesting is that Barrus and the others can actually see Phil through their “Science Eyes”, which is disconcerting for Erica since they end up communicating in the alien tongue and she hasn’t a clue what’s going on. It’s another element of Phil’s cluelessness in connecting and interacting with what little humanity is there. There’s a really interesting dynamic in seeing Phil interact with this group as it goes on as there’s a kind of near reverential tone and he’s mildly humble about it, but it also starts to provide for some tension since Erica realizes that things are not going right and Barrus and his people see Phil, through Erica, as being something they really need to secure for their own power as well as their own security. That it all comes down to another angle of the fallout from the things Phil did for them isn’t a surprise, but it turns into a situation that he can’t do anything about, which essentially means it’s just more struggle for Erica, especially since Phil gets cut off from her for a bit. On the plus side, she’s ditched the red costume for a white one for a bit, though again there’s little in the way of creativity on her part. It must run in the family.
In Summary:
Throwing Erica into a number of sticky situations is what the book is all about and that makes sense considkering what Phil has done and put her through. Erica has asserted herself at times and that’s been good to see as we realize she can hold her own against the weirdness and craziness that life is throwing at her now. There’s a decent bit of action throughout this, a good exploration of some of what Phil had been up to when he was off-planet and a look at the larger problems that have come from all of it. It’s moving Erica forward in an interesting way as she struggles with Phil’s presence and what he’s done to her. Where she ends up next could be interesting, especially since the galaxy is wide open. But we’re also left wondering what Earth will be like when she gets back considering some of the business side of things that were going on in the first arc of the series and how that’s been unfolding amid all of this material.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: September 17th, 2014
MSRP: $3.99
