Best of this Week: Outlawed #1 – Eve L. Ewing, Kim Jacinto, Espen Grundetjern and Clayton Cowles
It all starts with one incident.
The original Civil War kicked off when the New Warriors team, trying to get footage for their terrible reality TV show, started a battle with some supervillains in hiding, one of which was Nitro. Nitro self destructed and wound up killing over 750 people in Stamford, Connecticut. This resulted in heroes choosing sides in the debate of whether or not to register their identities and receive training under SHIELD, effectively being handed a leash, or choosing to fight against the tyranny of having their lives exposed and powers exploited.
It’s been a little over 13 years since that story and a new crop of heroes has emerged in its wake. Outlawed #1 takes the basic concept of Civil War and lowers sheer tragedy while maintaining the stakes of hero groups like The Champions who are caught in the immediate crossfire of its inciting incident, most specifically, their leader: Kamala Khan.
Eve L. Ewing starts the book in medias res with a Legislative hearing on a bill that would ban underage superheroism. Not only are the teens present, but we also get appearances from Avengers like Captain America, Captain Marvel and Vision, all of whom have big stakes in the fight. Captain America understands why they’re having the hearing, but counters that he was doing what the Champions were when he was their age, fighting for Freedom and he’s not wrong, but times have changed and there weren’t as many active superheroes as there are now.
Captain Marvel is a damning case as she’s managed to avoid any repercussions for her actions during Civil War II for the last few years, but one of the senators brings up the fact that two heroes under her charge became supervillains, those being Kamala’s former friends; Discord and Lockdown. She stammers as she can’t counter that and Vision is initially silent, indicating that something happened to Viv Vision in whatever incident occurred.
When Spider-Man, Riri Williams, Nadia Pym and Sam Alexander (Nova) are questioned, they are treated as though they are kids who needed adult support and supervision, almost like fragile things and not like heroes who have helped save the universe. Kim Jacinto and Espen Grundetjern characterize each hero through facial expressions and backgrounds that color their moods. Miles looks furious under his mask with a red background, Riri is nonplussed as she always is under a cool purple glow and Nadia is forlorn with hazy pink color.
Sam then goes on a tirade about how these same people don’t care about the problems that the Champions were created to solve like poverty, drug abuse and hunger and only make a stand when the kids try to protect their own and he makes a good point. When they were founded, the adult heroes were just fighting one another again and again, month after month and not caring about the citizens… but his concerns are simply pushed to the side by a well dressed man with a Supercuts hairstyle and fake concern.
We then cut to the “Coles Academic High School” where Kamala, Miles and others are attending some sort of teen summit to watch over the plot device, Ailana Kabua, as she’s been receiving death threats for her speeches on environmentalism. She’s a very obvious nod to Malala Yousafzai, a young Pakistani advocate for female education, and Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish environmental activist that’s also begun to speak to the world. Both of these young women have courted controversy for speaking about what they believe in and have garnered undue hatred for it.
The other Champions, consisting of Power Man (Victor Alvarez), Nadia Pym (The Wasp), Riri, Viv, Nova, Bombshell and Pinpoint, wait in the wings for anyone trying to assassinate or attack her. All things considered, this is a pretty stacked team. Ewing also does an amazing job of writing each character with their individual voices, much like she’s been able to make Riri Williams feel natural in her own solo series. They banter with each other like the teenagers/young adults that they are while Jacinto gives their stakeout a light hearted feel.
Things initially seem to be going well up until a DRAGON shows up out of nowhere to attack the summit. Jacinto, Grundetjern and Cowles give us an excellent splash page of the Dragon looking down at the Champions while breathing a small bit of fire. Jacinto frames the dragon as being far larger than the Champions, towering over the buildings around them with its wings taking up the sides of the page. Grundetjern colors the dragon with varying oranges, sometimes glowing and sometimes shadowed on its skin and Cowles accentuates it with a scratchy “GRAAAAAHHH” sound effect for its yell.
While some of them are dealing with that, Bombshell encounters the Roxxon Strike Team while Kamala and Ailana make their daring escape through the tunnels of the school. Jacinto and Grundetjern give us a double page spread of the absolute chaos with several Champions fighting off the dragon or the mercenaries. Admittedly, this scene is utterly chaotic but it does have something of a line to follow from the dragon flying through the air and its wing leading to Bombshell blasting a guy and Nadia with Power Man taking down another merc.
Grundetjern throws just about every color that they can in this scene, giving us vibrant greens for Pinpoint’s portals, nice and bright oranges for the dragon’s fire and Bombshell’s blasts as well as a more grayish black for Mile’s costume as he pretty much stomps a guy into mush
As much as the Champions maintain a sense of cordiality with each other, they’re still teenagers that struggle with working together from time to time and Ewing stresses that when Power Man forms a plan to use one of Pinpoint’s portals to punch the dragon with all of his built up Chi. Riri then comes up with her own plan to fly Power Man up to the dragon and then release him. They ask Ms. Marvel which option is better, but as she’s maintaining her cover with Ailana, she tells them to make the call.
In the middle of this indecisiveness, Viv swoops in and decides to air her frustration at not being able to defeat the dragon and decides that she’s going to phase through it. Jacinto draws a look of palpable anger on Viv’s face as she rushes past Riri with Grundetjern’s bright wave of green energy trails behind her as well as Cowles “SWOOOOSH” sound effect to capture the velocity of her flight.At the same time, Power Man, unaware of Viv’s rush of anger, goes through with his plan and punches through a portal.
This is where it all goes wrong.
Jacinto, Grundetjern and Cowles give readers a perfect sequence of panels with Power Man punching, Viv “ZOOMing” up to the dragon as Riri tells her to hold on and then the moment before it all goes bad. Pinpoint’s portal opens just behind Viv and she is overcharged with Power Man’s Chi in a blast of orange, green and yellow as her face is stretched in agony and her limbs contort before she overwhelms the dragon in two separate splash pages.
Both of these pages are intense as the first one sees Viv yelling pain before “taking control” and engulfing the dragon with a “FWOOOOSSHH” mirroring its firebreath. This page is filled with what appears to be green flame and a silhouette of Viv in the middle of it. The next splash page shows Viv alone in the pyro, looking like a horrific combination of the Phoenix Force and Dormammu. She has lost all control of herself and this is where Ewing, Jacinto and Grundetjern raise the stakes of the battle.
Viv’s newfound power spirals out of control and begins to collapse the school and the surrounding buildings and we cut to Kamala doing everything she can to protect Ailana from the collapsing ceiling around them before going back to the Champions scrambling to stop Viv. Ewing continues to show how well she can write Riri as she cries while making a plan with Nadia that possibly kills Viv and stops the dragon altogether.
The city is in shambles and this is one of the Champions lowest moments ever.
Cutting back to the present day, we see that the “Superhuman Welfare Act” passes and a new governmental watchdog group called CRADLE is sent to round up all of the teen superheroes and metahumans around America. The bill also seems to garner support from former teen heroes and New Warriors members Justice and Speedball. Justice had joined the pro-registration side during Civil War because he blamed himself for not being a guiding hand for the New Warriors that died at Stamford and Speedball had already suffered the consequences of surviving that same incident.
However, the one who may suffer the most is the girl who the act is nicknamed after, Kamala Khan as we see her in a hospital bed suffering from injuries while trying to save Ailana.
This first issue was explosive and gripping throughout. Initially I was worried that it wouldn’t be able to live up to its concept or just be a less cool Civil War, but the one thing that this book maintained because of Ewing, Jacinto, Grundetjern and Cowles was heart.
The Champions are heroes, but they’re also all teenagers that don’t have the experience that the adult heroes do and in typical American fashion, no one learns from the mistakes of the past. Victor already butted heads with Riri for his recklessness in the past, but now he’s given consequences for his actions. America remembers Stamford, but doesn’t seem to remember how the Civil War nearly tore the country apart and installed a tyrant in a high government position in the aftermath.
If anything, the Champions aren’t going to leave this incident the same people that they were before.
Ty Talks Comics 