Solar has been one of my favorite books each month but lately it dipped a bit.
That isn’t to say it can’t rise up and do a smashing good job to conclude it’s space adventure storyline. Is it good?
Solar: Man of the Atom #8 (Dynamite Entertainment)
If you’re just joining us, the story is all about a girl named Erica who is the daughter of the original Solar. He’s still around, although only as a glowing ghost of his former self without any powers. Those powers are now wielded by Erica, and for the last seven issues she’s encountered all types of hostile aliens, bonded with a robot and even recharged a sun (saving billions). Not bad for seven issues, but in the last issue we learned her father ticked off some aliens who want revenge and they’re chasing her back to Earth. This issue opens as she arrives and it’s not looking so great for Earth.
Uh oh.
The writing continues to be great by Frank J. Barbiere and while I wasn’t a fan of the pace in the last two issues things are jelling nicely here. The man simply captures the wonderment that makes imaginative stories work so well. In this issue Erica must take on thousands of robots, but for once her powers are charged up and she’s super powered. That’s fun to watch, but what makes the story all the better is the relationship between Erica and her father: he’s always in her ear thinking he knows better, but as we learned from these revenge seeking aliens his way doesn’t always work. Erica makes her own choices and it’s exciting to see because her character is so well rendered. On top of all this she does something with her powers that make Solar more exciting than ever.
The art by Jonathan Lau continues to do a lot to convey the epic nature of the Solar power and the stakes Erica faces. There are a lot of great panels that show the scope of the scene displaying how small Erica is in the face of this threat. It helps considering how powerful she is, not to mention how new she is to all of this, so that even though we know the powers of Solar can do godly things the imagery says otherwise.
I guess that’s a good reason to want revenge.
Is It Good?
A fantastic end to the space portion of the story that has interesting characters moments and increases the power set of Solar ten fold. Great read and a surefire must have when this is collected.
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