Gargoyles #8 // Review
There are a couple of Goliath’s clan viewing the scene from a distance. They’re looking over the prison that houses him. Coldstone doesn’t understand why Goliath is allowing himself to be captured by the humans. They haven’t exactly been trustworthy throughout history. He’d be even more upset if he could see inside the prison and see what they’re doing to him with the shock collar. Goliath doesn’t have to endure much before an explosion rips through the exterior of the prison. Danger enters the page early on in Gargoyles #8. Writer Greg Weisman continues a fun retro fantasy action series with artist George Kambadais.
Those who have broken into the detention facility aren’t there to rescue Goliath. He wouldn’t have asked anyone to come anyway. He wants to seek justice directly through the humans’ legal system. Those who have broken into the facility have some pretty advanced tech and no real concern for human life. They could deal with Goliath, but they have another target altogether. A prison guard is doubled-over in pain on the ground. Goliath lets him know that he can help apprehend the intruders...but he’s going to have to let him go. It’s an awkward situation. The guard in question happened to be the one who was administering the shock before the explosion.
Weisman has arranged a tight series of scenes that feel remarkably complete, given how little actually happens from the beginning of the issue to its final panel. The overall run of things from beginning to end is much shorter than the standard episode of the original animated series, but it feels complete as Weisman moves through business with Goliath at the prison while dealing with a single scene involving one major subplot. Drama. Action. It all rushes through quite efficiently.
Kambadais gives the emotional end of the story some depth. The torture sequence at the beginning of the issue is given just enough emotional weight to make the action of the rest of the issue that much more heroic. Goliath’s nobility is given quite a bit of real estate on the page, but there’s a great deal of serious action as well. Kambadais does a respectable job of directing the flow of the kinetics across the page in the central conflict, but it lacks the kind of punch it might have if there was a bit more to the fight than a simple physical struggle.
The TV series may have only run for a very brief time back in the 1990s, but there WERE 78 episodes in total. A comic book series would take quite a few issues to make up the kind of ground that the TV series did. Weisman is doing a solid job of laying out everyone in the ensemble and moving them through the motions on the page, but Gargoyles has a pretty large cast of characters, so it’s going to take a WHILE to get the momentum running on the series. It’s nice to see it off to such a solid start, though.
