Deadweights #4 // Review
Jerry and Clarence are waiting on a rooftop. Jerry wants to know if Clarence has his half of the rent. Kind of a weird thing to ask. Both of the guys are about to square-off against someone who tried to kill Jerry. Still...Jerry needs to make his point. Clarence is going to need to find a better job. And then the robots show-up and try to kill the two of them in Deadweights #4. Writer Tyrone Finch continues a fun, little offbeat post-superhero story with artist/colorist Sebastián Piriz. The series continues to find a distinctive pulse beyond the cliches of the superhero genre.
And honestly, honestly, it's kind of a weird group of robots. There's a clown. A gorilla. Horse that shoots blast of energy out of its head like it some nightmare unicorn or something. Jerry and Clarence have it together, though. At least initially. Life would be easier if they didn’t have to worry about this sort of thing. They’ve gone all “civilian” in their day-to-day lives with jobs and friends. Jerry works a sandwich shop for chrissakes. They’ve got it together. Then the robots show-up. And then they happen to notice that little ten-year-old Zara has aberrant DNA and everything gets A LOT more complicated.
Finch plays quite cleverly with all the trappings of a superhero story around the edges of the alleys of traditional urban superhero narratives. Things are hopelessly complicated in worlds of dramatic physics where superpowers just happened to hang out and walk around the street like everyone else. It would seem perfectly rational for a couple of guys gotten messed up in that life to try to do something normal. And it's really interesting the way Finch pieces it all together in a story that manages to remain remarkably character-centric in spite of all of the sci-fi tropes that are being explored.
Piriz has a delightful grasp of the surreal action centric world of superheroes contrasted against a very real and earthbound sort of lower middle class urban lifestyle. The mixture of advanced tech with powerful weapons on an urban rooftop shares the same cover with a casually tense conversation between a couple of guys at a sandwich shop. Piriz manages to keep it all feeling visually in synch in spite of the contrast between the surreally horrifying and the casually mundane.
The balance between they take cage that writer and artist are working with in this series is really, really touchy. If you move too far in one direction or another, it's going to end up falling down it's going to make it largely. However, the creative team on this particular book has done a very good job of maintaining the Nursia that keeps it on the razors edge between something remarkable. At the center of it all are a couple of guys who seem remarkably well-rendered intellectually and emotionally on a number of different levels that hit the page both visually and verbally.
