Radiant Black #34 // Review
River North. Chicago. An unmarked, white van pulls-up outside of Donut World. Masked figures pop out of the van. They’re armed and aggressive. Everyone inside is a bit confused: it’s a donut shop. That’s it. Why do they want to go into the door...to the restroom? They’re going to be confused, naturally. There’s.a certain hero who is alerted to their presence, but by the time he’d show-up, they would be gone. He’s got bigger problems to look into in Radiant Black #34. The writing team of Kyle Higgina and Joe Clark continue their saga with the art team of Eduqardo Ferigato and Marcelo Costa.
He’s arriving home after a particularly disappointing day. Things look grim when he gets home. There’s a guy waring a helmet mask who has his grilfriend tied-up and wired to blow just like the rest of the apartment building. The bomber is giving him an ultimatum: either leave or the whole place blows.. The bomber wants him to leave. Not just the apartment. Not just the building. Not just Chicago or the U.S. The omber wants him to leave the Earth. He evidently sees him as some kind of threat. The bomber has no idea how right he is.
Higgins and Clark mess around with various superhero drops in a story that feels very distinctly new. It's all very familiar, though. The threats. The action. The aggression. Superpowered people battling each other on the streets of an urban city. It's all very familiar. Not really anything new here at all. However, Higgins and Clark are managing the scripting in a way that makes it feel distinct. there's kind of an earthbound concern that anchors the lofty or concerns of science fiction fantasy adventure. Has been moving the plot forward quite well. And this is a particularly interesting showdown between various elements that seems to be pushing the ongoing plott in an interesting direction.
The art team does a good job of finding the right angles and the right impact in order to make these superpowered beings seem that much more powerful. It can be all too easy to just get things lost and simple slugfest between different forces. I hear everything seems to be solidly grounded in a kind of dynamic action that shoots around the page quite well everything seems to be wired for maximum impact. the overall visual reality that's being presented is a whole lot different from any other superpowered Science Fiction story. The distinctive personality of the habits, intensity, though.
Radiant Black seems to be avoiding the over-the-top intensity that it could be hitting the page with. The crazy level of interconnection between everything really would have had a greater potential to have greater impacts. However, the coherence of the story would have suffered a bit if they really do into the whole concept of parallel universes, and that sort of thing the way they could have. As it is, the multiversal angle on the story is kind of being used as gimmick to keep pushing things forward with respect to the plot. It's not a bad tool. It's just something that could've been used as something other than a plot device: something with greater thematic depth than they’re. going for here.
