Image Comics launches its newest series Adventureman featuring writing legend Matt Fraction, with a first issue that could leave readers divided.
WARNING: This review will contain spoilers so if you do not want to be spoiled, I suggest you come back after you have read the first issue.
We open Adventureman in what seems to be the middle of the story, where the city is under attack and the police chief calls upon the help of Adventureman and his comrades at Adventure Inc.
Adventureman Begins The Story With A Twist
The heroes of Adventure Inc. are quickly overwhelmed and subsequently defeated, when the book suddenly takes a complete tonal shift. It is then revealed that the story of Adventureman was just a story that a mother (Claire) is telling to her child (Tommy).
The shift between the intense action that we were seeing in the stor,y to what is actually going to be the real world of these characters was very abrupt and unexpected as a reader. This unique narrative device really has me excited about where the writers are heading with this.
The story actually follows Claire, who is raising her son and suffers from noise-induced hearing loss. She also runs her late mother’s book store. While at the store, a mysterious lady shows up and gives her a book relating to Adventureman. This, however, isn’t just another edition, but rather a “how-to” book.
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After that encounter, some other mysterious people in trenchcoats show up at the store to escort the aforementioned woman to her vehicle. Claire tells the woman that she left the book at the store when the woman tells Claire to keep the book and read it.
Claire is then attacked by another trenchcoat individual who is revealed to be a bug-like figure of sorts. When Claire goes to counterattack her foot goes right through him as the bugs scatter away from her.
When Claire returns home she shows the book to her son and passes off the encounter as just some hallucination due to low blood sugar. When Tommy examines the book he realizes that instead of the original publishers of Adventureman, the book is published by Adventure Inc. the organization in the original book.
Tommy also realizes that he can trace their house in relation to the city in the Adventureman logo. Claire passes this off as just Tommy’s imagination and proceeds to go to bed where the bugs from before entering her room, illuminating the book with some sort of energy. The issue then comes to an end.
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Overall this is a good start this new series by Image Comics. The characters in the real world have some interesting connections to the characters in the story. For instance, Claire has six sisters which is interesting because of the six sisters of satan which are mentioned in the story. The mysterious woman who shows up at the store also has a striking resemblance to one of the villains in the story, so I am interested to see how these connections will go on to affect the overall story.
The art is also fairly decent in this first issue. It has a sort of old-timey feel to it which fits well with the overall tone of the book, so I hope they stick with this style for a while.
What were you’re thoughts of Adventureman #1? Are you going to continue reading the series? Let us know in the comments below and be sure to come back to The Illuminerdi for more Adventureman reviews in the future!
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