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Breach #1
Writer: Bob Harras
Artist: Marcos Martin
Letters: Clem Robins
Ink: Alvaro Lopez
Publisher: DC Comics
3.90 out of 5 Stars
Reviewed by J. W. De Bolt Jr.
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Breach looks like a promising entry into the world of science-gone-wrong super powers. I picked this up after seeing Bob Harras’s name attached (X-Men, Nick Fury vs SHIELD, The Incredible Hulk). And Mr. Harras has been writing comicbooks for many years. So, really, how many new stories can be told in the same milieu? The way comicbook writers can come up with new stories month after month is to use the same patterns with different particularities, and that’s been going on since the 1940s. And we keep buying books, so I guess that works sufficiently. But, somehow, Mr. Harras makes this story work well.
The plot originates during the Cold War; the Soviets and the U.S. are racing to complete a cyclotron operation involving the opening of a new dimension in space-time. The scientific explanation is a bit puerile, but that’s probably either an effect of marketing requirements or the overall dumbing-down of society in general.
The characters and their interrelations are developed before the truistic calamity occurs, although you can see the shopworn military-experiment-goes-awry coming a mile away (or, at least, seven pages away). The scientist named Justus Ward is cleverly handled, as the reader isn’t sure if he is in a bad mood or genuinely malevolent. Small digs at American political situations are a little irritating; the author could have been subtler.
I have to admit that the story is engaging. You have the family element, the man-versus-system appeal, and the man-out-of-time potential (a la Captain America or the unnamed protagonist of The Time Machine). The ending of this issue comes up so suddenly that you are compelled to seek the next issue. Clean, crisp drawing by Marcos Martin (Batgirl: Year One) and Alvaro Lopez (Virtex) clearly portrays the action, with the help of the lightly-toned colors of the Javier Rodriguez Studio. This style is preferable to the highly stylized baroque darkness of some other titles where one has a hard time seeing what is happening. The people, however, are portrayed a bit too sketchily.
—CCdC— Cover image used without explicit permission in accordance with the "Fair Use" provision of US copyright law.
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