Redcoat #18 // Review
The water is rushing into the immediate area threatening to drown everything. Simon’s in the shadows with a large number of robed figures. They all have red hoods on which obscure their faces. Simon doesn’t care about that at all. He just wants to know what they want. Evidently they serve the name of George Washington. They’re after Benedict Arnold. It is the early 20th century. It’s als o the beginning of Redcoat #18. Writer Geoff Johns continues a sci-fi historical mash-up with the art team of Bryan Hitch and Andrew Currie. Color comes to the page courtesy of Brad Anderson.
The followers of George Washington have much to answer for, but the answers are going to have to wait. The area is flooding and Albert Einstein is still incapacitated. If Simon is to save his live, he’s going to have to act quickly. The room is flooding and Einstein runs the risk of drowning if Simon can’t get him out of the room. Simon may not be able to get any answers out of the followers of Washington, but maybe Einstein can offer-up some kind of insight if he’s taken to a place where he might be able to rest in safety.
Simon’s life with his 20th century wife gets a bit complicated as he’s forced to tell her everything. Johns may not have had a whole lot of time to deliver a full view of Simon’s relationship with his wife, but there’s more than enough going on in and within the substance of the script to lend considerable weight to the drama that dominates the issue. It’s a drama between Simon, his family and the life that he’s been trying to put behind him. There’s real intensity there, which is pretty impressive given just how much Johns has had to cram into the script.
Hitch and Currie drive the drama to the page with respectably vivid emotions. There’s nuance and subtlety to what’s going on between Simon and his wife and it’s all quite impressive in its own way. The drama may lack the kind of weight that would serve a solid grounding for everything going on in Simon’s life, but there’s more than enough there to keep it all moving from cover to cover between brutal action and the weight of intense emotional drama. Through it all, the horror of immortality continues to strike the page with impressive clarity.
The drama of earthbound immortality continues to be a central focal point of the series. Johns and company do a good job of bringing the drama and action and brutality to the page as various elements of history clash against each other. It all feels very well rented. However, the true intensity of American history feels that much more overwhelming than anything that. Johns could bring to the page. And so, in spite of the fact that it's our respectable and respectively, entertaining serial, it still doesn't live up to the true drama of the historical themes that Johns is covering.
