Shanghai’s protector is also one of the newest established superheroes in the Marvel Universe. Naturally, she’s going to feel a bit nervous about working with a seasoned veteran like Iron Man, particularly as her powers seem to be faltering in Aero #12. Writer Zhou Liefen delivers a well-modulated issue featuring a relatively even balance of the title character’s life as a hero, a professional, and a student of her own power. Artist Keng follows Liefen’s modulations with visuals that capture a variety of different moods. 

Aero and Iron Man have discovered a way to communicate with the inhuman crystalline monsters that have emerged from a mysterious tower. In communicating with them, they can control them, but they’re going to have to work fast. Aero’s powers are faltering. Later-on with the encounter behind her, Aero contacts her mentor Madame Huang, who has a few pointers for the hero on the modulation of her powers. Huang’s suggestions seem simple at first. What could be easier than blowing around a single strange of hair? And why does she want Aero to do it for 24 hours straight?

Liefen opens the issue in action and ends it in training. There’s transition in between as Aero’s alter ego Lei Ling is crushed with exhaustion. Liefen’s specific take on certain superhero traditions is endearing. Tony Stark is very thoughtful about giving Aero a few suggestions without being too demanding, but one would expect that out of a veteran Avenger. Leifen allows the social end of a team-up to play out as well...Tony sends her a text after he’s gone. On his way out he tells her that he’d enjoyed the team-up. He’s a total professional. Liefen brings that across cleverly. The deeper aspects of Aero’s power are explored as well as Lei Ling talks to Madame Huang to gain a bit of insight. There’s a kind of clever purity in pairing an action-oriented beginning with the solemn drama at issue’s end. 

Keng’s huge, expansive work with the visuals in the action sequence reaches a sharp crescendo this issue. Keng embraces the full visual reality of a couple of airborne heroes fighting monsters in one of the largest cities on earth. The moodier elements of the drama of training with Madame Huang fuse at interesting angles with the page. The atmospheric backgrounds of an inner sanctum feel wide, spacious, and settled as Lei Ling trains. It all makes it to the page without too much over-emphasis that might otherwise imbalance the issue.

Liefen and Keng have worked through whole issues weighted so heavily in one part of Aero’s life or the other. It’s nice to see an issue that spends a little bit of time in a few different corners of Aero’s life. Aero’s first big crossover comes to a close in an issue that conjures a tastefully shifted look at a traditional superhero story. Hero. Student. Professional. It’s all so familiar and all so fresh and new at the same time.

Grade: A