Commanders In Crisis #7 // Review
The idiosyncratic world of a newly-evolving group of superheroes develops as certain revelations are delivered in the seventh issue of Commanders in Crisis. The series continues to explore strangely familiar territory in a slightly new way. Writer Steve Orlando and artist Davide Tinto cast their world in a bit stronger clarity than it had been in previous issues. An increased sense of depth and resonance doesn't do a whole lot for the overall lack of originality in a series that seems mired somewhere between something breathtakingly new and something impossibly silly. The CIC experiment continues in a slightly more engaging direction.
Crisis Command has just delivered a pretty heavy bit of information on the world. They're all going to have to deal with it. The team heads off to Miami to deal with something else altogether: a villain with the unlikely name of Headcannon. Elsewhere, Frontier has journeyed to a distant realm of pure ideas with Thunder Woman. There are lessons to be learned, though, and so Thunder Woman takes Frontier to the Pleistocene. Back home, Executrix is forming a team to advance her own interests. Before long, Crisis Command is going to have to deal with the danger of Revenge Regiment.
Orlando opens the issue with a press conference as Crisis Command members lay some pretty heavy stuff on the world. There are a lot of different ways to show the impact of this sort of thing on society as a whole. Orlando's approach is fun. He uses a grid of single-panel person-on-the-street interviews that both provide perspective on the nature of what has been announced AND allows Orlando to expand the scope of the world. Frontier and Thunder Woman's trip to the realm of Lightning World brings some of the more abstract aspects of the story into a clearer focus.
Lightning World also allows Tinto a chance to get really fantastic with the visuals. So much of the rest of the series thus far has taken place in a very earthbound world. It's almost breathtaking to see him able to cut loose into a vaguely defined world of pure fantasy. The heroes present in the series look particularly beautiful in the seventh issue cast against the world's visual appeal. The weirder end of things outside of Lightning World is brought to the page with some flair. Headcannon looks appropriately absurd. Tinto renders enough visual diversity in the person-on-the-street-style interview panels to keep the world feeling fairly expansive.
Orlando and Tinto's experiment seems to be working on some level. They'd set themselves up with a tremendous challenge in attempting to make an entire multiverse breathe through a single series. The overall premise DID hit the ground running in the first issue, but for the most part, Commanders in Crisis has been reaching too far to try to be too many things in too short a stretch of pages and panels and things. It's a mess. The beauty in this issue makes it an appealing mess, though.
