Image Comics 2020
Created & Written by Steve Orlando
Created & Illustrated by Davide Tinto
Coloured by Francesca Carotenuto
Lettered by Fabio Amelia
The last survivors of the Multiverse live among us under new, superheroic identities, five survivors of doomed worlds...taking a second chance to ensure our world lives on. A new twist on strange superhero comics, with a bleeding-edge eye on the modern moment, COMMANDERS IN CRISIS follows in the footsteps of Doom Patrol and Thunderbolts as five unexpected heroes come together to solve a murder unlike any other. The victim? Compassion itself…This is ideacide!
This is somewhat ambitious, yes and it’s pretty relevant to what we experience in comics since 1985. Personally I hate these after the original, I thought it should never happen again, I mean one of the all-time best crossovers for me was when The Justice League of America, The Justice Society of America and The All-Star Squadron teamed up. That to me was an epic crossover event. Now I see them as an excuse to erase what they don’t like and try something new that’ll get wiped out as well eventually. What Steve is doing here however, is that he’s taking an idea and putting elements that are familiar but in a new kind of order. It changes the dynamic of the story and how it will move forward. This as it’s being imagined is something that I am already enjoying.
The way that this is being told is freakin awesome. How we see the story & plot development constantly moving forward through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is pretty impeccably laid out. It very smartly showcases the characters of this story so that we learn about them before we learn their secret. I am really impressed to see how Steve has taken what he’s learned thus far and is applying it here and this very well could be his greatest work to date. The character development is fantastic and after seeing them as a team and then individually and finally together without the costumes and Steve manages to get us invested in these people. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing this world and the characters to us it is so easy to see how well everything works together to create the story’s ebb & flow.
When I started reading the book I thought there might be digital artwork, I don’t think computer generated wouldn’t be the correct terminology any more. And the further I got into the book the less I thought about how it was done and instead I just got comfortable. This is the kind of comfort that you feel like you’ve known this forever, it’s just familiar in a way that’s hard to explain. The attention to detail we see through how the varying weights in the linework are utilised is really exceptional to see. I would have liked to see some varying techniques instead of solely utilising the linework but that’s modern storytelling in comics. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show us a remarkably talented eye for storytelling. The colour is beautifully rendered as well. I like how w4e see the various hues and tones within any given colour utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work. I also like that we see multiple techniques for laying the colour down that’s wonderfully shown here.
All in all this is a great book. It is clever, entertaining and smartly written so that we are introduced to the characters why they are here and what is to come. Everything is presented extremely well and it really is able to engage the reader perfectly. This is how i’d like to see any further stories in this vein, as a solo series and that’s it.