Shanghai super-guardian Lei Ling is up against a monstrous threat. To know what she’s truly up against, Ling will have to consult an old mentor who she has learned to mistrust in the eighth issue of Aero. Writer Zhou Liefen continues the early adventures in the life of Marvel’s prominent Chinese superhero in an issue stylishly drawn by Keng. The series continues to grow with Keng being allowed much more room to explore Aero’s world visually thanks to the issue-length chapters that have been allowed in recent issues. Aero’s back-up stories in early issues had hampered the rhythm of Ling’s story early on. 

The jade towers had sprung up all over. Shanghai. They appeared to be perfectly harmless additions to the city’s skyline until they started attacking. Aero sprung into action to defend the city. In the process of doing so, she noticed that the towers were largely inert--only attacking when they were approached. Curious about their nature, Aero approaches her former mentor Madame Huang, who tells her an interesting, hidden tale of the ancient past of Marvel’s earth and the giant beasts which roamed the earth in ancient times. Aero might be in over her head. 

Liefen’s explorations of Marvel Universe’s China have been an interesting alternate far from the frenetic overlapping stories of Marvel Manhattan. A simple story of a simple hero on the other side of the planet brings new life to a tired, old universe...even if the story  Aero is telling isn’t exactly anything new. Giant monsters and the heroes that fight them had been a part of the Marvel Universe before. It’s refreshing seeing the action take place in a nation far removed from the center of all the rest of the action. There’s a refreshing newness about it that Liefen is casting in clean simplicity as a single hero serves as the center of the whole nation.

Given the space of an entire issue, Keng is allowed to breathe a remarkable amount of depth and perspective into a larger-than-life story of magical creatures in the mists of ancient times. The first few pages illustrating Madame Huang’s tale are casually gorgeous. Any one of them would make for a good poster. The clean beauty of Keng’s work resonates through a very simple story of ancient power loose in the modern world. Though it DOES have it’s dramatic points, Aero#8: “Secret of the Ancients,” is largely a poised moment between action sequences. Normally this sort of thing doesn’t look terribly impressive on the page. Keng gives life to what could have been a very dull walk through the ancient past.

Aero looks beautiful. It moves quite well. There’s a general feeling of Marvel-ness about it, but without firmer grounding in the rest of the Marvel Universe, it feels a bit distant from the rest of the world. This isn’t a bad thing, but it DOES keep it from benefitting from the volume of the rest of everything that so many others have created for Marvel over the course of the past half-century or more. 

Grade: B