Primer--Clashing Colors #1 // Review
There’s a superhero who would like to introduce herself to you. Her name’s Ashley. She’s only 13, but she’s got 33 super powers generated from 33 different body paints that were developed from the DNA of prominent superheroes. She mentions this before mentioning that she was adopted. (Her birth father is in prison. She refers to him as a “jerky jerk face.” So y’know...she’s cool.) She begins a multi-part limited series in Primer--Clashing Colors #1. Writers Thomas Krajewski and Jennifer Muro open a fun series with artist Gretel Lusky. Primer has a fun personality that plays well with the extended-length format of the first issue.
She is relatively new on the scene. Not many people know about her. And she's got the usual sorts of problems that a young superhero would have. Chief among them would be getting noticed. So when she sees the.New Teen Titans battling Deathstroke, she naturally wants to help out. Unfortunately, by the time she gets changed, they’ve already captured the villain. That doesn’t mean that she’s going to simply pass-up an opportunity to make the best of her meeting with a prominent group of heroes with a demographic that she just happens to fit into.
Krajewski and Muro develop a really social sort of an opening narrative. Ashley is seen in and around her apartment, hanging out with her parents and dealing with a call from her birth father. Krajewski and Muro vary the scenes enough to be able to give Ashley a very respectable introduction in her first issue. And though her specific breed of overly anxious, young superhero has been seen in comic book pages before, Krajewski and Muro give her more than enough distinctive personality to keep the issue feeling refreshing even for someone who has been reading superhero comics for decades.
Lusky’s art style suits the tone of the script quite well. There is a great deal of dynamic motion in both the drama and the aggressive action as they flow across the page. The manga-inspired art style finds a delicate fusion with more traditional American superhero-style comic book art. The color provides a great deal of depth and nuance to the visuals. Most impressive is the range of emotion Lusky manages with Ashley, who comes across looking distinctly 13, with a fresh face and the slightest hint of freckles on her face.
This mini-series, of course, follows the 2020 debut of this material in a graphic novel format. It's too bad a character hadn't shown up that much since. It seems entirely possible that DC would be interested in exploring the possibility of taking the character a little bit further. It will be interesting to see a subsequent series by the same creative team that followed Ashley on the verge of graduation from high school, which is where she would be now. There’s a lot of potential with Ashley as she works her way through the awkwardness of her teen years.
