Commanders In Crisis #9 // Review
Empathy is dead, and the world is falling apart. It doesn’t help the there are a whole bunch of people who haven’t exactly been totally honest or open about some pretty important things. The heroes of Crisis Command have a great deal of work to do in the ninth issue of Commanders in Crisis. Writer Steve Orlando manages a few adorable moments in another chapter brought to the page by artist Davide Tinto. A tremendous amount of story rests in expository dialogue. Orlando and Tinto’s tale has aspects that might be interesting, but it’s washed away in a flood of details that are far too crowded to feel engaging.
Frontier has returned to Crisis Command, having had a few moments...somewhere else. The rest of the team is reluctant to trust her after all that’s happened, but they’re going to have to come together. There’s a group of antagonists en route to attack them while the world falls apart in the absence of empathy. Meanwhile, members of the team do a little investigation that involves consulting with Doctor Dracula. They’ve collected a blood sample for him in a rather aggressive fashion, and they’re looking for answers. He might be able to give them some.
Orlando has a few clever ideas in this installment. Doctor Dracula’s an enjoyable character: a connoisseur of blood who is can also connect up via psychic clairvoyance with the person that blood came from. A couple of heroes showing up giving him a sample collected during combat is a charming touch. A pit it’s a part of such a messed-up muddle of an issue. Again: the central idea that the world is suffering from a lack of empathy as a concept isn’t framed in a terribly competent way. Every member of Crisis Command’s team of antagonists seems interesting enough to carry their own books. So it’s kind of frustrating that they get crammed into the same panels at the end of the issue.
Tinto does an outstanding job of framing those fascinating-looking villains in a variety of panels at the end of the issue. It’s a really diverse group that looks really appealing. Everyone of them seems to have a story. The actual action this chapter, though...is pretty lacking. A few isolated moments aside (the penultimate page is wonderfully kinetic), Tinto’s art is uncharacteristically flat in quite a few moments that could have been more dynamic. He’s working with a variety of different moods. Some of it works quite well, but it feels inconsistent in the ninth issue.
Orlando’s been pretty restless with the narrative of this series throughout. The ninth issue makes this feel all the more frustrating by flashing by a few really clever moments that could have made been expanded into issues all their own. (The villains could have been expanded into their own series.) There is a delicate art in ensuring that everyone in a large ensemble gets enough time on the page. Orlando’s not doing a perfect job of maintaining an engaging balance between characters.
