Commanders In Crisis #1 // Review
Mega-crossovers are always difficult to negotiate. Too many people in a single issue, and the whole thing is a mess. Some people still haven’t learned this. However, a good portion of any success lies in being too stupid to know what you can’t do. Writer Steve Orlando holds on to the ignorance long enough to put together a promising first issue with Commanders in Crisis. It’s a DC-esque Crisis superhero story featuring a whole bunch of characters who are getting their debut in an issue that is brought to the page by artist Davide Tinto. It’s a cluttered mess of a debut, but there are some sparks of originality peering out of the chaos that just might turn into something as the series progresses.
Prizefighter is contacting Frontier. A superhero team known as Crisis Command is being attacked by time travelers from the future. Prizefighter wants Frontier to help out, but fieldwork isn’t really her thing anymore. She knows they can handle the threat on their own. The invaders from the future are stealing emotions. They’re sucking hope from people in the present in hopes of transplanting it into a future that seems to have lost it entirely. Meanwhile, back at the Command’s Think Tank, Frontier discovers something disconcerting that leads her to investigate a morgue. The team she leads consists of extremely young US Presidents from parallel earths who have come to reside on the only one left. The Crisis Command is the final earth’s last hope.
Orlando is an experienced writer of this sort of thing. So there are no excuses. He really should know better than to try to throw this much story at the first issue in a series. It’s muddled. The concept of invaders from the future stealing the abstract concept of hope could be really, really cool if Orlando spent a little bit more time fleshing it out. As it is, the mix of magic, science, and quantum reality that Orlando’s lovingly cramming into the comic book comes really, really close to becoming a parody of itself before the final page of its first issue. Thankfully, Orlando DOES know how to tell a story like this without keeping everything from completely crashing together. The characters presented here are all pretty interesting, and the pacing is quick enough to hold it all together from beginning to end.
Tinto has done an exquisite job of designing a whole new word populated with a whole bunch of appealingly interesting characters. Action comes across the page with a solid impact. The costuming for all the characters might lack a certain amount of originality, but it all looks distinctly unlike anything that has made it to the page in recent memory. Peril and drama hit in a variety of different ways. Tinto makes physical action feel every bit as intense as emotional gravity. There’s also a splash of medical drama that hits the page with compelling force. Tinto varies the intensity from scene to scene with a fluid flourish that aids Orlando in keeping everything moving.
The first issue of Commanders In Crisis could have played-out in a much more savvy series of something like 6 issues. Clearly, Orlando and Tinto have places to go and things to do with a plot that has a great deal of places to be beyond the first issue. If Orlando can settle-down into a steadier, less manic rhythm with the series in the issues to come, Commanders in Crisis might turn into something interesting. As of right now, it’s way too much, way too soon.
