Hive #1 // Review
Mason is bruised and spitting up blood as he slumps over on his knees.. Shay is towering over him. He asks her for a cigarette. She tells him he should have stayed away. He asks her about a queen’s mercy. Things aren’t looking good for him in Hive #1. Writer A.J. Leiberman opens a fascinating story with artist Mike Henderson and colorist Iñaki Azpiazu. The opening issue is a tantalizingly fragmented buzzing of different elements that all seem to zigzag around the page with a weird frenzy. It’s not entirely clear what’s going on, but whatever it is looks really, really interesting.
Mason Shaw is a worker bee. It’s apparent from the start of a somewhat nonlinear narrative that he’s going to have more than a few problems with the overall power structure of what is known as The Hive. It’s not entirely clear what it is that’s going on, but there is definitely something involving mind control and a financial services company known as “Apiary Funds.” Cute. Command a couple of people to do something they wouldn’t normally do? Okay. But if they do it that’s weird, right? Especially if it happens after their truck crashes down an overpass somewhere in Florida? That’s weird, right?
Lieberman comes dangerously close to completely fragmenting the plot in an uninteresting way. There’s a lot that’s tying into the narrative of the first issue and it’s not all exactly framed in a way that features any kind of a central narrative that has any kind of a clear approach to the reader. In it’s own way that IS good. And the whole...flight of the bumblebee thing with the script nd the plot would seem like kind of a forced observation were it not for the fact that Lieberman is REALLY working the motif. The beehive imagery that Lieberman is working with seems totally hammered into every angle of the script. Surprisingly...it works.
Henderson does a kind of a brilliant job putting it all together in the course of things. There’s a crude sensuality about some of the art that mixes moods and tones throughout the opening issue. Henderson masters a series of moments whether they be bloody, sexual, casual, tense or nuanced. Azpiazu coats the page in a richly atmospheric look that feels so distinctly Floridian. You can practically feel the disgustingly obscene humidity coming off the page. You can smell the exhaust coming off the highway as the truck rushes to its doom.
With the opening frame of the story well and fully delivered, Lieberman and company are going to have to work on making the rest of everything come together as well. Once all of the elements of the story are in full view, all of the gimmicks that have been hammered into the motif are going to have to work their way into actually being something and THAT is going to be a bit of a challenge what with how good it’s all been so far.
